Determination of failure degree of 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs after short-circuit test using an improved test setup

Analysis of the short-circuit characteristics of SiC metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors(MOSFETs)is very important for their practical application.This paper studies the SiC MOSFET short-circuit characteristics with an improved test setup under different conditions.A high-current Si insulated gate bipolar transistor is used as a circuit breaker in the test circuit rather than the usual short-circuit test conducted without a circuit breaker.The test platform with a circuit breaker does not influence the calculation results regarding the shortcircuitwithstand time and energy,but the SiCMOSFETwill switch off after failure in a very short time.In addition,the degree of failure will be limited and confined to a small area,such that the damage to the chip will be clearly observable,which is significant for short-circuit failure analysis.