Characterization of Body Diodes in the-State-of-the-Art SiC FETs-are They Good Enough as Freewheeling Diodes?

This paper investigates the switching phenomenon of body diodes in the state-of-the-art discrete SiC FETs. A comparative performance evaluation of the body diodes in planar and double-trench SiC MOS-FETs, and trench cascode SiC JFET is performed using standard double pulse test methodology. In addition, the switching characterization of planar discrete anti-parallel freewheeling SiC Schottky diodes is included. A series of key electrical parameters such as peak reverse recovery current, recovery time, dv/dt, and di/dt during first and second half of reverse recovery are experimentally measured in order to get an insight on the quality of these diodes.