Thermal modeling of single event burnout failure in semiconductor power devices

Experimental investigations of single event burnout (SEB) of power devices due to heavy ion impacts have identified the conditions required to produce device failure, A key feature observed in the data is an anomalistic secon dary rise in current occurring shortly after the ion strike. To verify thes e findings including the thermally induced secondary plateau, simulations h ave been performed on the model single event burnout. The new modi:ls inclu de additional thermally dependent electrical components to capture thermall y induced physical effects. Through the inclusion of analytic temperature m odels coupled with the electrical model, the electrical response is predict ed with reasonable accuracy. The simulations provide order-of-magnitude est imates as well as prediction of phenomenological features such as the secon dary rise in current. This work represents a first attempt to characterize thermal failure of power devices due to heavy ion impacts by including temp erature dependent components that until now have not been modeled. The ther mal model in the present work produces qualitative agreement with experimen ts on SEE that have been previously unexplained, (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.