The Trade-Off between Surge-Current Capability and Reverse- Recovery Behaviour of High-Voltage Power Diodes

This paper discusses the trade-off between surge-current capability on the one hand and reverse-recovery charge, ruggedness and softness of high-voltage diodes on the other hand. Diodes with a CIBH (Controlled Injection of Backside Holes) structure in front of the cathode and a highly doped p+-region combine high surge-current capability with reverse-recovery ruggedness and softness. This can be further improved by embedding a SPEED (Self-adjusting p-Emitter Efficiency Diode) or an IDEE (Inverse injection Dependency of Emitter Efficiency) structure in front of the anode. The IDEE concept causes a decrease of the emitter efficiency at low current densities and an increase of the emitter efficiency at high current densities. This reduces the reverse-recovery charge and further increases the surge-current capability. It is shown that the recently introduced IDEE concept works more efficiently than the SPEED concept