Solid State Pulsed Power Modulator With Asymmetric Bipolar Pulse and High Repetition Rate for Semiconductor Manufacturing Process

This article proposes a solid-state pulsed power modulator (PPM) with asymmetric bipolar pulses and high repetition rates for semiconductor manufacturing processes. Since the proposed PPM is based on high voltage solid-state switches (HVSSes) consisting of series connected silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide silicon field effect transistors (MOSFETs), it is simple to obtain variable asymmetric bipolar pulses as well as unipolar pulses. To solve the voltage unbalance problem, which is a critical challenge when the SiC MOSFETs are connected in series, a simple voltage balancing circuit is proposed. This balancing circuit shows superior features such as low loss and high reliability because it is composed of only passive components such as transformers and capacitors. In addition, the proposed PPM can achieve the high repetition rate since the soft switching of all SiC MOSFETs can be accomplished by the balancing transformer. Furthermore, the soft switching characteristic and the low loss of balancing circuit can contribute to the miniaturization of PPM by reducing the sizes of components and cooling systems. The design and implementation of 5 kV PPM with high repetition rate of 500 kHz are presented. Experiment results from the developed PPM are shown to verify the proposed works.