Effects of Electrostatic Discharge Stress on Current-Voltage and Reverse Recovery Time of Fast Power Diode

Fast recovery diodes (FRDs) were developed using the epitaxial layers grown by low temperature epitaxy technology. We investigated the effect of electrostatic discharge (ESD) stresses on their electrical and switching properties using current-voltage (I-V) and reverse recovery time analyses. The FRDs presented a high breakdown voltage, >450 V, and a low reverse leakage current, A. From the temperature dependence of thermal activation energy, the reverse leakage current was dominated by thermal generation-recombination and diffusion, respectively, at low and high temperature regions. By virtue of the abrupt junction and the Pt drive-in for the controlling of carrier lifetime, the soft reverse recovery behavior could be obtained along with a well-controlled reverse recovery time of 21.12 ns. The FRDs exhibited excellent ESD robustness with negligible degradations in the I-V and the reverse recovery characteristics up to kV of HBM and kV of IEC61000-4-2 shocks. Likewise, transmission line pulse (TLP) analysis reveals that the FRDs can handle the maximum peak pulse current, , up to 30 A in the forward mode and down to - 24 A in the reverse mode. The robust ESD property can improve the long term reliability of various power applications such as automobile and switching mode power supply.