Influence of the Design of Square p+ Islands on the Characteristics of 4H-SiC JBS

A novel diagonal square array junction barrier Schottky (JBS) diode is created to enhance the forward current and reverse breakdown voltage by increasing the Schottky contact area and shortening the diagonal spacing between two adjacent p+ islands in the active area of a JBS diode. The shape of the p+ islands is square and the positional arrangement of the p+ islands is a diagonal array. Half of the upper and lower p+ islands with smaller areas are connected with the innermost p+ guard ring to create more Schottky contact area and laterally extend the electric field to the edge termination. Results show that the forward current density and reverse breakdown voltage for the diagonal square array JBS diode are 4.2% and 10.7% higher than those for the conventional square array JBS diode, respectively. As the spacing increases, the breakdown voltage for the diagonal square array JBS diode and the conventional square array JBS diode decrease by 3.5% and 7.3%, respectively, indicating that the diagonal square array JBS has more uniform depletion regions and electric field to retain the breakdown voltage.