1178 IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 37, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2016

Current Sharing Behavior in Si IGBT and

SiC MOSFET Cross-Switch Hybrid
R. A. Minamisawa, U. Vemulapati, A. Mihaila, C. Papadopoulos, and M. Rahimo

Abstract— The cross hybrid (XS) concept has been demon-

strated experimentally with 3.3-kV Si Insulated Gate Bipolar
Transistor (IGBTs) and SiC MOSFETs in parallel, and used to
calibrate 2D Technology Computer Aided Design simulations.
The XS hybrid offers lower switching losses compared with
full Si IGBTs and reduced oscillations compared with full SiC
MOSFETs. The current sharing mechanism between the IGBT
and the MOSFET in the XS hybrid has been elucidated, showing
that under typical switching conditions, the IGBT dissipate
98% of the XS hybrid turn-OFF losses compared with the SiC
MOSFET. Since the current density of the IGBT in the XS hybrid
is twice of that of the full IGBT solution, it exhibits higher
dynamic avalanche. These features results in stress at device and
package level, thereby compromising robustness and reliability.
In order to overcome such issues, we show that increasing the
turn-OFF gate resistance improves current sharing in the XS Fig. 1. (a) and (b) Illustration of the schematics of the Si IGBT and
hybrid by delaying the turn-OFF of the MOSFET, and thereby SiC MOSFET arrangement for the XS hybrid with common gate resistor
suppressing dynamic avalanche in the IGBT. and induvial gate resistors, respectively, and (c) The simulated (lines) and
experimental (symbols) on-state characteristics of 3.3kV Si IGBT and SiC
Index Terms— Si Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor, MOSFET (with active area of 1cm2 each).
SiC MOSFET, cross hybrid.

I. I NTRODUCTION
S ILICON carbide (SiC) based power semiconductor
devices have boosted the development of energy efficient
and high frequency power electronics applications, ranging
from photovoltaic (PV) inverters to traction systems [1].
In fact, the low losses at low current of SiC MOSFETs and
Schottky barrier diodes (SBD) makes them very competitive
to today‘s Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors mainstream tech-
nology. However, SiC has the drawback of significant higher
cost due to expensive substrate manufacturing as well as epi-
taxial growth processes. That, in turn, drives the applications
to develop solutions featuring less SiC device area, at the
expense of higher thermal resistance and higher conduction
losses. Furthermore, SiC unipolar devices strongly suffer from
oscillatory behavior during turn-off switching due to the lack
of excess carriers (stored charge or plasma), which is present
in its bipolar counterpart, e.g., Si Insulated Gate Bipolar
Transistor (IGBTs) [2].
In order to overcome some of these limitations, hybrid
arrangements of SiC unipolar with Si bipolar devices have
been proposed [3], [4]. As an example, Si IGBTs with antipar-
allel SiC SBDs are widely employed in PV inverters. However,
Manuscript received June 3, 2016; revised July 20, 2016; accepted
July 27, 2016. Date of publication July 29, 2016; date of current version
August 23, 2016. The review of this letter was arranged by Editor K. Matocha.
R. A. Minamisawa, U. Vemulapati, and A. Mihaila are with the
ABB Corporate Research Center, Baden-Dättwil 5405, Switzerland (e-mail:
renato.minamisawa@ch.abb.com).
C. Papadopoulos and M. Rahimo are with ABB Semiconductors, ABB
Switzerland Ltd., Semiconductors, Lenzburg CH-5600, Switzerland.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LED.2016.2596302
0741-3106 © 2016 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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this type of hybrid only provides loss reduction with respect
to the diode switching performance.
Another promising concept proposed is the cross
switch (XS) hybrid featuring Si IGBTs and SiC MOSFETs
in parallel arrangement, which has been demonstrated
experimentally with 1.2kV [5] and 6.5kV [6] rated devices.
The XS hybrid concept shows clear improvements in terms
of loss reduction, soft performance, short-circuit capability,
and the prospect for lower overall cost compared to full SiC
solutions. Whereas all performance metrics of XS hybrids
have been comprehensively characterized, the switching
behavior at the device level has not yet been investigated
in terms of current sharing between the Si and SiC devices,
which in turn, is often unpractical to measure and to vary
parameters experimentally. Such understanding is fundamental
for enabling packaging and topology development, targeting
improved performance and reliability.
In this letter we report on the investigation of the XS
hybrid featuring 3.3kV Si IGBT and SiC MOSFET. We match
the simulations with experiments, which are then employed
to elucidate the mechanisms of current sharing between the
Si IGBT and the SiC MOSFET during turn-off switching.
Finally, we investigate the turn-off behavior as a function of
the gate resistance as a mean to optimize current sharing
between the SiC MOSFET and the Si IGBT as well as
robustness and reliability of XS hybrids.
II. S IMULATIONS AND E XPERIMENTS
In order to calibrate the 2D simulations, device parameters
were adjusted in order to match the experimental on-state
characteristics of the 3.3 kV devices. Fig. 1 (a) and (b) display
the schematics of two XS hybrid configurations investigated in
MINAMISAWA et al.: CURRENT SHARING BEHAVIOR IN Si IGBT AND SiC MOSFET
Fig. 2. (a) Comparison between turn-off waveforms at 1.8kV, 64A, 100nH,
33, 150° C for full Si IGBT (solid/dashed red line), full SiC MOSFET
(solid/dashed black line), and XS hybrid (solid/dashed blue line). (b) Turn-off
waveforms for the XS hybrid under similar conditions as (a), showing the
current shared at the Si IGBT and the SiC MOSFET.
TABLE I
T URN -O FF L OSSES A ND OVERVOLTAGE
this work, featuring a common gate resistor RGC , or individual
ones (RGI and RGM ) with a single gate unity, respectively.
The devices (Si IGBT and SiC MOSET) are arranged in
parallel with each having 0.5 cm2 active area for the XS hybrid
configuration (the total active area is 1cm2 ). The threshold
voltage at 150° C (VT ) is 7 and 4.5 V for the SiC MOSFET
the Si IGBT, respectively. Fig. 1(c) shows the simulated
and experimental steady-state output characteristics of 3.3 kV
Si IGBT (active area 1cm2 ) and SiC MOSFET (active area
1cm2 ) at 150° C.
The experimental data was measured using reference sam-
ples consisting of Si 62.5A Soft Punch Trough IGBTs and
five 12.5A SiC MOSFETs, both amounting to 1cm2 total
active chip area. A SiC Schottky diode was employed as the
freewheeling diode.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
Fig. 2(a) depicts a comparison between the turn-off
waveforms under typical operation conditions (1.8kV, 64A,
RGC = 33, 150° C) and 100nH inductance for the XS hybrid,
full Si IGBT and full SiC MOSFET solutions. As previously
shown, the XS hybrid switches slower than the SiC MOSFET
and faster than the full Si IGBT, while suppressing oscillation
and reducing the overvoltage (V). For an equivalent on-state
voltage, the turn-off loss (Eoff ) is reduced by 24 mJ (35%)
with the XS Hybrid in respect to full Si IGBT (Table I), while
the overvoltage is reduced by 148V (54%) compared to full
SiC MOSFET.
1179
Fig. 3. 2D simulations of impact ionization in the IGBT for (a) XS hybrid
and (b) full IGBT solutions. At 1770 V, the XS hybrid experience higher
dynamic avalanche due to the smaller area.
The turn-off waveforms of the Si IGBT and the SiC
MOFET shared in the XS hybrid at 1.8kV, 64A, 100nH,
RGC = 33, 150° C, are shown in Fig. 2(b). Most of the
turn-off losses are determined by the Si IGBT (∼98%), which
depends on the current level carried in the steady state. The
current sharing behavior in the XS hybrid can be summarized
in three time steps, represented in Fig. 2(b) by t1 , t2 and t3 .
The gate is turned-off at about 2.1 μs. At t1 , the MOSFET is
still on and less resistive compared to the IGBT because of
the higher capacitance of the SiC unipolar device compared
to its Si bipolar counterpart. At t2 , the SiC MOSFET reaches
its VT and turns-off, thereby experiencing significant increase
in resistance. The Si IGBT, in turn, remains flooded with
carriers and thus conducts most of the load current of the
system. At t3 the Si IGBT enters in dynamic avalanche. Since
the IGBT current density in the XS hybrid is twice that of the
full IGBT, it exhibits higher dynamic avalanche as shown by
2D simulations displayed in Fig. 3.
As an undesirable consequence, packages featuring an XS
hybrid under typical operational conditions will exhibit non-
uniform current and heat distribution, with hot spots concen-
trated mostly in the IGBT. This may result in robustness and
reliability issues for high-frequency applications that are not
pronounced in full Si IGBT modules, where hot spots are
minimized at both, device and package level.
Based on the understanding of the current sharing mecha-
nisms in the XS hybrid, we now propose a mean to reduce the
dynamic avalanche and high temperature stress in the Si IGBT.
As aforementioned, the XS hybrid losses concentrates at the
Si IGBT when the SiC MOSFET reaches its VT during turn-
off. By increasing the gate resistance, the switching time of
the gate is increased such that the SiC MOSFET remains on
for longer time with respect to the IGBT. As such, the current
sharing between the devices is improved before the turn-off.
The turn-off losses of the XS-Hybrid are mainly determined
by the Si-IGBT current carried in the steady state, which is
proportional to the active area of the device. As such, the
XS-Hybrid with the combination of 20% IGBT and
80% MOSFET exhibits lower turn-off losses compared to the
1180
Fig. 4. (a) and (c) turn-off losses (Eoff ) for the XS hybrid and its Si IGBT
(1.8kV, 64A, 100nH, 150° C) as a function of the common gate resistance
(RGC ) and RGI /RGM , respectively. (b) and (d) show the turn-off waveforms
of the XS hybrid with RGC = 100 and RGI /RGM = 150, respectively.
XS-Hybrid with 50% IGBT and 50% MOSFET. However, the
Si-IGBT in the XS-Hybrid experiences more stress (higher
peak power density and dynamic avalanche, which might limit
the safe operation area of the device) if the active area is
smaller as it has to carry full load current before it turns-off
(not shown).
Fig. 4(a) depicts the Eoff dependence on a common Rg for
the XS hybrid as well as for its Si IGBT featuring common
gate resistor, showing that the overall turn-off losses of the
hybrid increases up to 50mJ (∼16%) at Rg =100, while it
reduces 38 mJ (∼12%) in the Si IGBT. Notice that in this
case, t2 is shifted in time to ∼3.7μs. Whereas such decrease
of switching losses in the IGBT is not dramatic, the maximum
IIGBT at 1.8kV is reduced to ∼44A (Fig. 4b) that is about 30%
lower than that for Rg = 33., thereby suppressing dynamic
avalanche.
Figure 4(c) shows the turn-off dependence as a function
of the gate resistance ratio between the MOSFET and IGBT
for the individual gate resistors case with a single gate unity.
The gate resistance of the IGBT is fixed while it has been
varied for the MOSFET. The sharing of the turn-off losses
between the MOSFET and IGBT is improved at high Rgm /Rgi
as the current sharing is improved significantly before turn-off,
as shown in Fig. 4(c). Again, this implies that the stress on
the devices is reduced. However, the total turn-off losses
increase with an increasing Rgm /Rgi (12% from the
Rgm /Rgi = 20 to 150).
From the application point of view, Rg control employing
a common gate resistor is the most feasible approach for
balancing current sharing in the XS hybrid. Adjusting the
VT of the MOSFET is possible but unfortunately ineffective
as the current sharing during turn-off is not much improved
and not able to suppress the IGBT dynamic avalanche (not
shown). Ideally, the switching of the MOSFET would be
slowed without compromising device performance, which is
challenging in terms of design optimization. Nevertheless, the
findings of the present work may pave the way for optimizing
IEEE ELECTRON DEVICE LETTERS, VOL. 37, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2016
robustness and reliability the device, module and topology of
XS hybrids to the target application.
The XS hybrid concept provide a number of advantageous
features for future power electronics applications targeting
high power and low losses for a wider range of operating
frequencies. It offers the combined characteristics of both a
bipolar IGBT and unipolar MOSFET whereas the MOSFET
part is especially beneficial at low currents compared to an
IGBT having an inherent junction potential barrier of ∼0.7V.
Therefore, for many applications operating where losses are
taken into account for the full current range (i.e. idle and
sub-load conditions), the XS hybrid is an optimal lower cost
solution. Furthermore, improved power handling capability is
possible at high currents due to the IGBT bipolar contribution
and low chip thermal resistance without the need for a large
SiC MOSFET area. Finally, the XS hybrid is able to reduce
the switching losses considerably for applications targeting a
moderate (i.e. two to three times) increase in the operational
switching frequencies while maintaining soft transient perfor-
mance for low EMI.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In summary, we have demonstrated the XS hybrid concept
with 3.3kV Si IGBTs and SiC MOSFETs in parallel, and
used it to calibrate 2D Technology Computer Aided Design
simulations, showing lower switching losses and reduced
oscillations compared to full Si IGBT and full SiC MOSFETs,
respectively. The current sharing mechanism between the
IGBT and the MOSFET in the XS hybrid have been verified
via simulations, showing that under typical operation condi-
tions, the IGBT dissipate 98% of the XS hybrid turn-off losses.
Since the current density of the IGBT in the XS hybrid is
twice that of the full IGBT solution, it exhibits significantly
higher dynamic avalanche. These features results in stress at
device and package level, thereby compromising robustness
and reliability. We finally show that increasing gate resistance
enables the SiC MOSFET of the XS hybrid to conduct higher
currents during switching, thus, the reducing current density
and losses in the Si IGBT.
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