ANALYSIS AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE SEGMENTED ANODE LIGBT

A new LIGBT (Lateral Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) structure, cal led the segmented anode LIGBT, is presented and analyzed. In this LIGB T, the anode structure which is responsible for the injection of minor ity carriers for conductivity modulation is implemented using segments of p+ and n' diffusions along the device width. This segmented design of the anode structure minimizes the forward bias of the p+ injector during device turn-off, resulting in higher switching speed compared t o the shorted anode LIGBT. Furthermore, since the n+ region required f or electron extraction is implemented along the device width and consu mes only a small amount of area, a reduction in device size is also ac hieved. The improvement on switching speed and reduction in device siz e in the segmented anode LIGBT result in better tradeoff between on-re sistance and turn-off time compared with other LIGBT's. The superior p erformance of this structure has been presented [1]. In this paper, tw o-dimensional numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the operation and characteristics of the structure, and the experimental inductive and resistive switching characteristics of the structure wil l also be discussed.