Power Semiconductor Device Basics Abstract

Power semiconductor device has been the key technology for controlling various kinds of electric equipment, energy flow management for power grid and power transmission such as HVDC and energy saving systems control including PVs, HEVs, wind turbines and batteries. Specially, recent increase in electric energy demand highlights power semiconductor device as the solution technology to meet the requirement for energy saving.

Power MOSFETs and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) have been the major power semiconductor devices in the today’s market and these silicon devices show technology progress by breaking the limit with the superjunction structure, trench MOS gate, thin-wafer / field stop technologies. Emerging new material (SiC, GaN) devices have recently penetrates in some application segment by the extreme performance. Power IC technology, packaging and protection technology have become more important than ever with the high density integration of the power electronics system and devices.

In the lecture, the following topics will be explained.

1. History of power semiconductor devices

2. Power electronics circuit principle and major applications of power semiconductors

3. Power semiconductor device structures and physics

    -Power MOSFET / Superjunction MOSFET

    -IGBT

    -Lateral devices (LD-MOS, LIGBT) for power integrated circuits

4. Status and future possibility of SiC, GaN power devices

5. Other topics