Electric field enhancements due to space charge in thin polyimide film

Polyimide (PI) is widely used in film form as a passivation material for power semiconductor devices of Si, SiC, GaN, etc. The magnitude of the electric field at the edge termination area of these semiconductor devices is becoming higher and higher due to the increase of operational voltage and /or demand for shrinking the edge termination area to increase device active area. Hence it is concerned that space charge accumulation in the encapsulation and passivation material affects the insulation performance of those devices. In this report, space charge distribution and electric field enhancement associated with the charge accumulation have been investigated for thin PI film with thicknesses of about 20 μm, using Laser Intensity Modulation Method (LIMM). It is shown that the enhancement factor of the internal electric field (the maximum internal electric field divided by the applied field) in PI film is negligibly small (less than 1.1) for applied fields less than 10 kV/mm. However, it can reach much higher like 1.4 at higher applied field like 25 kV/mm. This result implies that electric field at edge termination area should be carefully designed under such an operational electric field as is the case of SiC devices.