Wide Bandgap Power Semiconductor Devices for Next Generation Smart Power Electronics

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This project combines High Voltage Very Large Scale Integration (HV VLSI) technology with wide-bandgap (WBG) power semiconductor devices to advance the next generation smart power electronics for renewable energy, smart grids, smart homes, electric and hybrid electric vehicles (EV/HEVs), telecommunication and other emerging industrial applications. Silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) are promising WBG semiconductor materials that have unique advantages in terms of low on-resistance, high breakdown voltage, high switching speed and high temperature operation. They can provide significant saving in cooling requirements and allow power converters to have high efficiency and smaller form factor. According to marketing firm Yole Développement, the global demand for WBG power semiconductors has an explosive compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20-30%, with an estimated market size of US$1.32 billion by 2022. We propose to investigate selected topics on the design, fabrication, and utilization of WBG power devices for next generation power electronics. This exploratory work will allow us to solicit more focused future industrial projects. The proposed topics include the design and fabrication of novel vertical GaN power devices, and the development of smart gate driver ICs for WBG power transistors. Most current commercial GaN power transistors are lateral devices. They have limited reliability, power handling and dissipation. The rapid reduction in cost and wider availability of bulk-GaN wafers have opened up the opportunity to explore vertical GaN power devices. These vertical structures, including GaN Schottky barrier diodes, GaN JFETs and MOSFETs, can provide much better current handling and thermal performance. Their avalanche breakdown capability will also improve the reliability. We will also develop HV-CMOS based smart gate driver ICs with embedded microprocessor for silicon, GaN and SiC power transistors. These intelligent features such as dynamically programmable gate driving strength, precise timing control for parallel operation, dead-time correction and EMI suppression will allow the performance of WBG power devices to be fully exploited. The combination of high performance WBG power devices with customized gate driver ICs will bring smart power electronics technology on to the next level. This project will also support our activities at the University of Toronto EV Research Centre (UTEV). Finally, this project will provide unique multi-disciplinary training from device fabrication, integrated circuit design to packaging for at least four graduate students each year. This experience will allow them to contribute immediately to Canada's power electronic workforce.