STATUS AND TRENDS OF POWER SEMICONDUCTOR-DEVICE MODELS FOR CIRCUIT SIMULATION

The current status of research in the field of power semiconductor dev ice models is reviewed. For this purpose, the basic modeling problems and research issues, which have to be overcome in this field, are disc ussed. Recently, some new and quite promising modeling concepts have b een proposed, which are compared with more traditional ways of achievi ng an efficient tradeoff between the necessary accuracy, required simu lation speed, and feasibility of parameter determination. From this co mparison, a prediction of the future evolution of circuit simulation m odels for power semiconductor devices naturally emerges. Many of the d ifferent concepts are expected to survive only in an application niche , where their specific points of strength are important. However, thre e modeling concepts have already been proven to be successfully applic able to the complete spectrum of power semiconductor devices and have their strength for different grades of complexity of the power circuit . A revolutionary development from anticipated or long-due breakthroug hs is on the other hand not expected in the foreseeable future.