IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 43, NO.

5, MAY 1996

685

Modeling and Characterization of the Reverse Recovery of a High-Power GaAs Schottky Diode
Sameer P. Pendharkar, Craig R. Winterhalter, and Krishna Shenai, Senior Member, IEEE fast switching speed. This mechanism is not present in the Schottky structure, and hence, makes the Schottky structure clearly superior in high-speed power switching applications. Although it is expected that the Schottky rectifier will show better reverse recovery characteristics compared to P i - N diodes, it is difficult to fabricate high-power Schottky rectifiers with reverse breakdown voltage VBD > 100 V on silicon substrates because of increased surface leakage currents. Compound semiconductor materials are known to result in surface Fermi-level pinning characteristics because of high density of surface states [5]. In addition, these materials provide improved electron transport due to higher carrier mob For example, GaAs devices with identical values of VBD are shown to result in nearly an order of magnitude improvement in electrical conductivity compared to silicon devices [6]. Improvement in material growth and device technologies has resulted in the fabrication of high-power GaAs Schottky diodes which can be used to reduce the overall power losses in a given converter. Although much work has been done to study the reverse recovery characteristics of high-power P i - N diodes [7]-[ 101, limited results are available in the published literature on high-power Schottky diodes. This study is motivated by the need to understand the reverse recovery of high-power GaAs Schottky rectifiers under different operating conditions. This paper is organized in the following manner. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the parameter extraction technique used to extract physically-based parameters for a 200-V GaAs Schottky diode using the measured data and results obtained from a 2-D device simulator [ l l ] . Next, the reverse recovery performance of the diode is studied at elevated temperatures and the physics of switching dynamics is analyzed. An advanced mixed device and circuit simulator [12] is used to study the internal plasma dynamics of the diode under boundary conditions imposed by the measurement circuit. For comparison, results obtained from a 600-V silicon P-1-N diode are also presented under identical static and dynamic operating conditions. For both diodes, the simulation results are shown to be in good agreement with the measured data. Whereas the reverse recovery characteristic of a silicon P-i-N rectifier is degraded at elevated temperatures, that of the GaAs Schottky rectifier is found to improve with temperature.
1 1 . DIODEPARAMETER EXTRACTION

Abstract-The reverse recovery characteristics of high-power GaAs Schottky rectifiers are reported at various temperatures. Mixed device and circuit simulations were used to study the internal plasma dynamics during the reverse recovery process. In this approach, semiconductor transport and heat generation and diffusion equations were solved self-consistently using a twodimensional (2-D) finite element grid structure under boundary conditions imposed by the measurement circuit. The simulation results are shown to be in good agreement with the measured data at temperatures in the range of 25"C to 125"C. These results are compared with the reverse recovery characteristics of a commercial silicon P-1-N power rectifier under identical conditions and it is shown that carrier depletion is the dominant mechanism causing the reverse recovery in a GaAs Schottky diode. The reverse recovery power loss is negligible in a GaAs Schottky rectifier and is shown to decrease as the case temperature is increased, contrary to the silicon Pd-N rectifier behavior.

I. INTRODUCTION N many power electronic applications such as the motor drives and pulse-width modulated (PWM) converters, switching frequency in excess of a few hundred kilohertz is used to reduce the size of the passive components [l]. With this increase in switching frequency, there is a need for faster devices with reduced switching power loss in addition to low conduction power loss. A power rectifier can severely impair the performance of fast-switching converter topologies and is often one of the most crucial components. It is therefore desirable to have a rectifier with low forward conducting voltage drop [2], minimum reverse leakage current, minimum reverse recovery, and a soft reverse recovery which limits the EM1 and decreases the switching power losses and the stress. One such rectifier is the GaAs Schottky diode. The GaAs Schottky diode has several advantages over the silicon P-i-N diode. These include improved switching speed and reduced reverse recovery power loss. The improved switching speed stems from the Schottky diode being a majority carrier device whereas the P-i-N structure is a minority carrier device and is prone to minority carrier charge storage effects [3], [4]. This characteristics of the P-i-N structure is particularly deleterious when used in applications requiring
Manuscript received November 2, 1995; revised December 20, 1995. The review of this paper was arranged by Editor N. Moll. S. P. Pendharkar was with the Electronics and Computer Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI 53706-169 1 USA. He is
now with Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX 75243 USA C. R. Winterhalter is with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Depart-

ment, University of Wisconsin-Madison, W1 53706-1691 USA. K. Shenai is with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607-7053 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9383(96)03365-5.

To perform detailed 2-D device simulations, several important material and device design parameters are needed. The parameters needed for 2-D simulation of a Schottky diode are: the drift region doping density ( N D )and the drift region

0018-9383/96$05.00 0 1996 IEEE

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 43, NO. 5 , MAY 1996

thickness (d), the diode area A, the asymptotic value of barrier height of the metal-semiconductor interface at zero electric field $BO, the effective series resistance R, and a , a constant used to model the barrier lowering effect caused by the dipole charge present at the metal-semiconductor interface. The device structures used in this study are shown in Fig. 1. The Schottky rectifier was fabricated on epitaxial n-/n+ GaAs substrates grown by LPE. The field termination was provided using field plates. In addition, diodes with pf guard rings around the Schottky electrode were also fabricated. The Schottky contact was formed by dry etching a silicon oxynitride dielectric layer and sputter depositing and annealing a titanium alloy. The structure and doping parameters of the commercial P-i-N diode were obtained from the vendor. The area A of the device was extracted from optical measurements of completely processed wafers and was corrected for all process-induced variations such as undercutting during wet etching. This value of A agreed closely (within 2%) with the value obtained from mask dimensions. The area can also be calculated by finding the equivalent width of the device by comparing measured forward I-V and simulated (2-D simulation) I-V characteristics. The drift region doping density and drift region thickness are obtained from the measured avalanche breakdown voltage characteristics. Values of 11.5 ,um and 4.5 x 1015 cm-3 were extracted for d and N o , respectively. The value of N o was found to be in good agreement (within 10%) with that extracted from the measured reverse biased C-'-V curve and SIMS measurements. The zero electric field barrier height, $BO was extracted using the 1/C2 versus reverse voltage curve [13]. The measured 1/C2 curve was extrapolated to obtain the X-axis intercept voltage V,. Using the relation

ANODE

Aluminum
/

Dielectric

1
I
Tiianvm Alloy

ii
n-Si

N , =

2.85 XI
n+- Si

o ' cm ~ -3

1j

j58.0pm

N = ,

1.04X10'8cm-3

CATHODE

ANODE

Ynum

nt GaAs

the value of junction built-in potential Vb,was extracted. The correction factor ( k T / q ) accounts for the majority camer distribution tail. The correction is simply the dipole moment of the error distribution [13], [14], the true carrier distribution minus the abrupt distribution. The value of $BO was calculated from the relation

N , =

2 o ~ 1 d ~ ~ m - ~

CATHODE
(b)

Fig 1

BO

v b i

+v n

(2)

Cross sections of (a) 600-V silicon P-I-N diode, and (b) 200-V GaAs Schottky diode

where V, is the Fermi-level separation from the conduction band energy in the bulk. This quantity is simply a function of the doping concentration and is given by the following equation

v ,

= -lll(%) kT

The value of the effective series resistance R was obtained from the results plotted in Fig. 4(a) in the voltage range of 0.9 V-1.2 V [15]. The value of the static dipole barrier lowering constant a was found using the following relation

(3)

1s

AA*T~ (e-&bnlnkT)

(eqV/nkT-l

(5)

where NC is the conduction band density of states and is given by [21 (4) where To is 300 K and T is the,absolute case temperature of the device under test. The values for NC varied from 4.6 x 1017 cm-3 at 25C to 6.5 x 1017 cmP3 at 100C.

where A* is the effective Richardson constant and & , is the effective electric field dependent barrier height of the metalsemiconductor junction. A plot of ( 5 ) on a semi-log scale was used to extract the diode ideality factor n. It should be noted that the value of n is not required by the simulator. It is included here just to take into account the tunneling currents [16]. As the tunneling current effects are not very significant for a doping of 4.5 x 1015 ~ m - ~ ,M n 1 is expected. The

PENDHARKAR et al.: REVERSE RECOVERY OF A HIGH-POWER GaAs SCHOTTKY DIODE

687

value of n extracted from measurements at room temperature was 1.012 which confirms the fact stated above. The value of n was extracted at each measurement temperature. It was found that the value of n increased slightly with temperature consistent with literature [14]. The total barrier lowering A$, is given by

1200
.

-2D-SIMULATIONS o MEASUREMENT

1000

11

46%
where

460

- A4

(6)

I z W

800

A$ = Aq5'

+ A4"

U U 3 0

600

(7)

where A$' is the image force induced barrier lowering and A$'' is the static dipole lowering given by the following relationships

8
% 0

w a

400

A$'
and

/%
-

200

0 0
40
80

120

160

200

A$" = QE,
where E, is given by

(9)

CATHODE VOLTAGE (V)

Fig. 2. Measured and simulated avalanche breakdown characteristics of a 200-V GaAs Schottky diode at 25OC.

Using the above equations, the value of Q was extracted. The value of a is dependent on temperature, and hence, Q was extracted at each temperature from the measured I-V curves.
111. COMPARISON OF MEASURED AND

6E+19

5E+19

SIMULATED STATIC PERFORMANCE

The parameters previously obtained were used to develop a 2-D simulation grid and the static simulations were performed using PISCES2B [ll]. A plot of the measured and simulated reverse breakdown curves are shown in Fig. 2. This plot shows that the simulated and measured diode structures have nearly identical breakdown voltages confirming the fact that the extracted drift region parameters are correct. The measured reverse leakage current is found to be greater than the simulated values. This is primarily attributed to the fact that surface leakage currents are pronounced in Schottky diodes. The surface leakage currents are not included in the simulator leading to a lower reverse leakage current in simulations. In Fig. 3, a plot of 1/C2 versus reverse voltage is shown for both the simulated and measured data at 25OC. Again, there is a good agreement between the measured and simulated results. The I-V curves are shown in Fig. 4(a) at various temperatures ranging from 25OC to 100OC. The agreement between the measured and simulated data is good at lower temperatures. In Fig. 4(b), the junction built-in potential Vb, is plotted versus temperature. This plot shows that has a negative temperature coefficient which is expected. A decrease in Vbi with increasing temperature suggests that the zero-bias capacitance of the device is increasing as the case temperature is increased. The discrepancy between the measured and simulated values of Vil, especially at higher temperatures, results from the difficulty in making accurate capacitance measurements at elevated temperatures. This is caused by an increase in leakage currents above room temperature.

4E+19

3E+19

2E+19

1E+19

- - - MEASUREMENT
1E+18 0
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

REVERSE BIAS (V)

Fig. 3. Measured and simulated 1/C2 versus reverse bias voltage for a 200-V GaAs Schottky diode at 25OC.

Iv.

COMPARISON OF

MEASURED AND SIMULATED REVERSE RECOVERY CHARACTERISTICS

The reverse recovery of the rectifier was measured using the circuit shown in Fig. 5(a). The reverse recovery was seen by applying two pulses at the gate of the IGBT. The first pulse turns the IGBT on, allowing current to flow through the inductor therefore charging the inductor to the desired current level. During this pulse, the diode is reverse-biased and no current passes through it. At the falling edge of the first pulse, the IGBT is switched off and the current begins to free-wheel through the diode. After the current has reached a steady value,

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL 43, NO 5, MAY 1996

B
R
0.0 0.2 0.4
0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

ANODE VOLTAGE (V)

(a)

0.7

-2D-SIMULATIONS o MEASUREMENT

- .=
I -

0.65

Fig. 5. Circuit schematics used for (a) measurement, and (b) mixed device and circuit simulations of the reverse recovery of diodes.

9 Iz LLI

2
z

0.6

5
2
0.55

0.5

25

50

75

100

125

TEMPERATURE ("C)
(b)

Fig. 4. Measured and simulated (a) I-V characteristics, and (b) junction built-in potential for a 200-V GaAs Schottky diode at various case temperatures.

the IGBT is once again switched on and the diode is reversebiased and current flows only through the inductor. This is the point at which the reverse recovery of the diode is observed. The reverse recovery was also studied using an advanced mixed device and circuit simulator [la]. The simulation circuit used is shown in Fig. 5(b). In this circuit, the IGBT is replaced by a switch in series with a small inductance. The working of the circuit is very simple and is explained briefly. The resistance R is used to establish the initial current in the inductor L. The values of R and the supply voltage are chosen appropriately to establish the initial current in L equal

to the measured value. Next, switch SI is opened so that current freewheels through the diode, the device under test (DUT). Then the switch S z is closed to initiate the reverse recovery process. The value of Lsmall is adjusted to obtain the required d i l d t during the diode turn-off process. The discrepancy in the measured and simulated waveforms is attributed to the fact that switch SZ in series with Lsmall does not properly simulate the IGBT behavior in the circuit shown in Fig. 5(a). The DUT used in the circuit in Fig. 5(b) is the 2-D diode grid developed from static mtasurements. The measured and simulated reverse recovery waveforms are shown in Fig. 6(a) at 25C and 100C. The results clearly show the negative temperature coefficient of the diode reverse recovery. This is further demonstrated in Table I, which shows the total measured reverse recovery time t,,, and the measured reverse recovery charge Qrr, at a d i / d t of 140 A l p s and at temperatures ranging from 25C to 100OC. The reverse recovery charge was estimated by integrating the area enclosed by the reverse current waveform. The reason for the negative temperature coefficient of the diode reverse recovery is explained below. Reverse recovery in a junction diode is basically attributed to two capacitances viz., depletion capacitance and diffusion capacitance. It has been shown that, at high current densities, Schottky diode can show some minority carrier injection [17], with effective minority carrier lifetimes in the range of 0.1 ns to 1 ns. The diffusion capacitance in high-power Schottky diodes can be significant because of large die size. The diffusion capacitance is proportional to T x T 2x e ( - - Y $ b n l k T ) x { e(qVlnkT)- 1) where

PENDHARKAR et al.: REVERSE RECOVERY OF A HIGH-POWER GaAs SCHOTTKY DIODE

689

2D-SIMULATIONS MEASUREMENT

-2L
0

50

100

case of Schottky diodes, r does not increase significantly with temperature, and hence, the exponential term dominates causing a decrease in diffusion capacitance with temperature. This causes an improvement in the reverse recovery performance of the Schottky diode with temperature. The depletion capacitance in P-i-N as well as Schottky diode increases somewhat with temperature because of the negative temperature dependence of the built-in potential. Fig. 6(b) plots the reverse recovery characteristics of a 600-V silicon P i - N diode for comparison. As can be seen from Fig. 6(b), the reverse recovery characteristics of a P-i-N diode degrade with temperature for reasons explained above. Moreover, the P-i-N diode shows a significantly degraded reverse recovery characteristics compared to a GaAs Schottky diode because of large diffusion capacitance (caused by large minority carrier lifetimes).

TIME (nsec)
(a)

v.

CONCLUSION AND

DISCUSSIONS

-2

-4

40

80

120

160

TIME (nsec)
(b) Fig. 6 . Measured and simulated reverse recovery characteristics at 25OC and 100C for (a) 200 V GaAs Schottky diode and @) 600 V P-2-N diode.

The static and reverse recovery performances of a highvoltage GaAs Schottky diode were studied using an advanced 2-D >mixeddevice and circuit simulator and compared to the measured data. It was shown that the GaAs Schottky diode reverse recovery mechanism greatly differs from that of the silicon P-i-N diode. In addition, the GaAs Schottky diode was shown to have superior performance in terms of improved switching time and reduced reverse recovery power loss. A systematic approach is described to extract accurate device parameters from simple measurements that can be used to construct a 2-D simulation grid. In all cases, the simulation results are shown to be in good agreement with the measured data. The mixed device and circuit simulation results presented in this paper clearly demonstrate the usefulness of 2-D device simulations at the circuit level in understanding the complex carrier dynamics in high-power switching devices. This approach is expected to become important in developing next generation of high-power devices optimized for a given application. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors are indebted to A. Saleh of Motorola Power Products Division, Phoenix, AZ, for providing the GaAs Schottky diode samples used in this work. REFERENCES
N. Mohan, T. Undeland, and W. P. Robbins, Power Electronics; Converters, Applications and Design. New York Wiley, 1989. M. S. Adler, Factors determining forward voltage drop in field terminated diode (FTD), ZEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, vol. ED-25, pp. 529-536, 1978. R. N. Hall, Power rectifiers and thyristors, in Proc. IRE, 1952, vol. 40, pp. 1512-1518. A. Munoz-Yague and P. Leturq, High-level behavior of power rectifiers, IEEE Trans. Electron. Devices, vol. ED-25, pp. 4 2 4 9 , 1978. W. E. Spicer, P. W. Chye, P. R. Skeath, C. Y. Su, and I. Lindau, New and unified model for Schottky barrier and 111-V insulator interface states formation, J. Vac. Sci. Technol., vof. 16, pp. 1422-1433, Sept./Oct. 1979.

TABLE I MEASURED 200-V GAASSCHOTTKY DIODE REVERSE RECOVERY PARAMETERS

Temperature
2572

trr (ns)
52

Qrr (nC)
32.5
21.3 20.3 8.5

50C 75C
100C

50 49 40

T is the effective minority carrier lifetime. In P-i-N diodes, r increases significantly with temperature causing the diffusion capacitance to increase. This results in the degradation of reverse recovery characteristics at higher temperatures. In

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTRON DEVICES, VOL. 43, NO. 5 , MAY 1996

[6] K Shenai, R S Scott, and B J Baliga, Optimum semiconductors for high-power electronics, ZEEE Trans Electron Devices, vol 36, pp.
181 1-1823, Sept 1989 171 H Benda and E Spenke, Reverse recovery processes in silicon power rectifiers, in Proc IEEE, 1967, vol 55, pp 1331-1354 181 F Berz, Step recovery of PIN diodes, Solid-State Electron, vol. 22, pp 927-932, 1979 Ramp recovery in PIN diodes, Solid-State Electron, vol 23. [9] -, pp 783-792, 1980 [IO] J A G Slatter and J P Whelan, PIN diode recovery storage time, Solid-State Electron, vol 23, pp 1235-1242, 1980 [ 1I] ATLAS Users Manual, Silvaco International, Santa Clara, CA [ 12J MIXED MODE Users Manual, Silvaco International, Santa Clara, CA f Semiconductor Devices, 2nd ed New York 1131 S M Sze, Physics o Wiley, 1981 mechanisms in atom[ 141 K Shenai and R w Dutton, Current t~~nSPOrt lcallY abrupt metal-~emiconductorInterfaces, Trans Electron Devccec., vol 35, no 4, pp 468482, Apr 1988 Trans Devices, vO1 41, no 12, I9g4 wl p Van Mleghem, EEE [I61 C Y Chang and S M Sze, Carrier transport across metalsemiconductor barrier<, Solid State Electron, vol 13, pp 727-740, 1970 1171 D L Scharfetter, Minority carrier injection and charge storage in epitaxial Schottky barrier diodes, Solid-State Electron , vol 8, pp 299-301, 1965

Sameer P. Pendharkar was bom in Pune, India, on September 6, 1972 He studied for five years
at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and received the M Tech degree (integrated) in electrical engineering in 1994 He received the M S degree in electrical engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, in 1995 Currently, he is with Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, where he is working on developing Application-Specific Power IC (ASPIC) technologies

Craig R. Winterhalter received the B S degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, i n 1995 He is currently pursuing the M S degree in electrical engineering, also at the University of Wisconsin, Madison His current research is in the area of power semiconductor devices

Krishna Shenai (M79-SM89), for a photograph and biography, see p.149 of the January issue of this TRANSACTIONS