Radiation effects in wide-bandgap power devices
by Corinna Martinella (Presenter)
ETH Zurich – Advanced Power Semiconductor (APS) Laboratory, Switzerland
Abstract – Wide-bandgap materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) are attractive for power applications in space and avionics, but also in high-energy accelerators and nuclear industries. The possibility to operate power devices at higher voltage, current and temperature with respect to silicon-based ones and the ability to switch at higher frequencies with reduced losses, is greatly improving the overall electrical efficiency and power density of power-electronic systems. Despite the beneficial characteristics of wide-bandgap devices, the currently commercially available technologies are still susceptible to radiation effects. Starting from the microscopic effects at device level and moving toward the radiation tolerance and reliability in different radiation environments, this talk presents an overview of different SEEs observed in commercial wide-bandgap devices, highlighting the differences to traditional silicon technology.
Corinna Martinella
Corinna Martinella received the MSc degree in Nuclear Engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy in 2016. She spent one year as Technical Student at the European Organization for Nuclear Research – CERN, Switzerland, where she was working on the radiation monitoring systems for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In 2021, she obtained the PhD degree in Applied Physics from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland in the framework of a collaboration with the R2E project at CERN and the Advanced Power Semiconductor (APS) Laboratory at ETH Zurich. Her research was devoted to radiation effects and reliability of commercial SiC power devices for high-energy physics, space and avionic applications. In particular, she focused on the single event effects (SEEs) mechanisms investigating the root cause of the radiation damage. Since 2021, she joined the APS Laboratory at ETH Zurich as a Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer of Power Semiconductor. Her technical interests include testing and modeling of radiation effects in power devices (SEE, TID and DD), investigation of radiation-induced defects in SiC using different spectroscopy analysis, and exploration of doping techniques for the next generation of SiC devices.
