When tasked with developing the fourth generation 650 V rated Field Stop (FS) Trench IGBTs, Fairchild’s engineers had a high bar to overcome to develop a successor to the successful third generation IGBTs. To meet their design goals for achieving higher performance without sacrificing reliability or ruggedness, the design team took some innovative approaches toward optimizing the sub-micron width trench and mesa cell design of Fairchild’s FS technology.
In doing so, they stretched the ‘ideal limit of silicon’ and were able to achieve a remarkable 30% reduction in switching energy loss as a result. In spite of highly increased channel density, their work resulted in very strong dynamic latch-up immunity, safely operating without failure under high-current switching of more than 3000 A/cm2 under severe test conditions. The following paper was presented at PCIM Europe 2015.