Novel method for modelling the local electro-thermal behaviour of discrete power diode using Verilog-A in a standard CAD environment

An original method of modelling power devices is presented in this article. This method consists in generating a 3D electrothermal netlist from the knowledge of the device layout. Each element of the produced netlist is described thanks to the Verilog-A language which allows to describe both electrical and thermal effects. Thanks to that method, the DC characteristics of Schottky power diodes can be obtained, and full 3D transient electro-thermal simulations can be done. Both DC characteristic and transient electro-thermal behaviours are obtained using a SPICE-like simulator. The simulations realised with our method are compared to conventional Technology Computer-Aided Design (TCAD) simulations. It is shown that our approach allows simulating the behaviour of power diodes six times faster than with TCAD tools.