High-Voltage Fast Recovery Avalanche Diodes on Silicon Carbide

This paper describes the laboratory samples of high-voltage (1560 V) fast recovery (20 ns) avalanche diodes based on silicon carbide (SiC). It is shown that the fabricated diodes are capable of dissipating energy up to 2.9 J/cm2 in the mode of single avalanche current pulses (1-μs pulse duration). The numerical computation of the unsteady heat process shows that self-heating by an avalanche pulse causes the local temperature in the base of the diodes to reach at least 1100 K.