Breakdown Voltage Instability Mechanism on the Field Limiting Rings Edge Termination of Buried Layer Rectifier

In this article, an innovated buried layer rectifier (BLR) breakdown voltage (BV) instability has been tested and analyzed. Under the reverse current stress (RCS) condition, the BV read-out profiles show walk-in and walk-out phenomena. Based on the experimental results and surface traps theory, a sort of time-dependent degraded simulation is developed by TCAD tools, which is considered with hydrogen depassivation and diffusion process. In order to explore the inner mechanism, the dynamic electric parameters are analyzed during the degraded period. Due to the hole interface traps, the termination Si-SiO2 surface leakage current is deteriorated and the depletion boundary is shrunk, which reveal the BV values instability. Thus, the proposed physical model could clearly explain the whole process of degradation, while it fits BV and junction temperature curves to the experimental results identically. Furthermore, the investigated mechanism will be helpful to future device design and failure situations analysis.