Comparisons and Evaluations of Silicon and Wide Band Gap Devices at Cryogenic Temperature

In this article, the static and dynamic characterizations for semiconductors with different materials, including silicon (Si), silicon carbide (SiC), and gallium nitride (GaN), are evaluated and compared at room temperature and cryogenic temperature (liquid nitrogen temperature). For static characterizations, the on-state resistance and threshold voltage are evaluated. For dynamic characterizations, the turn-on switching loss, turn-off switching loss, and dynamic on-state resistance (
R
_ds(on)
) are evaluated. The results demonstrate that Si and GaN based semiconductors have improved performances with lower on-state resistance and faster switching speed at low temperature operations. For SiC based semiconductors, the on-state resistance increases significantly at cryogenic temperature. The switching speed is reduced dramatically for the evaluated 1.2 kV SiC metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) at cryogenic temperature. This makes it less attractive for cryogenic applications. For the evaluated 650 V and 900 V SiC MOSFETs, the switching speed remains almost unchanged at low temperature. GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) demonstrates a fast turn-on switching speed at low temperature, where the device's
dv/dt
and
di/dt
are almost doubled when compared with room temperature. In addition, the dynamic
R
_ds(on)
of the evaluated GaN HEMTs also decreases at low temperatures. The evaluation results can serve as guidelines for cryogenic power electronics applications. Meanwhile, the future work for semiconductors cryogenic characterizations is discussed.