WHO: SemiSouth Laboratories Inc., a silicon carbide (SiC) based semiconductor company, will discuss the attributes of their Normally-off SiC JFET operating under high temperature conditions. SiC-based semiconductors can operate in hostile environments where their silicon-based counterparts cannot. Silicon carbide's ability to function in high temperature will enable large performance enhancements to a wide variety of systems and applications.

WHAT: The paper entitled “High Temperature DC and Switching Performance of 20A 800V Normally-off SiC VJFET” reports the electrical characteristics of a 20 A, 800 V normally-off SiC VJFET power switch at temperatures ranging from 25 C to 250 C. The devices were fabricated on 3-in. 4H-SiC substrates using an implanted-gate, self-aligned VJFET process developed at SemiSouth. The die and source pad area were 4 mm2 and 2.7 mm2, respectively. Tested in purely unipolar mode with a gate-source bias of 2.5 V and drain-source bias of 1 V, the devices exhibited source-pad-normalized on-resistance values of 2.2 mΩ•cm2 at 25 C and 8 mΩ•cm2 at 250 C. Drain saturation current at a gate-source bias of 2.5 V and drain-source bias of 5 V decreased from 21.5 A at 25 C to 8.3 A at 250 C. Packaged in a standard TO-257 package, these devices showed stable avalanche breakdown above 800 V.

WHEN: Dr. Andrew Ritenour, Senior Device Engineer, will present this paper on Tuesday, May 13 in session TP1B-SIC Devices from 3:45pm – 5:45pm.

WHERE: HiTEC 2008 is being held at the Hotel Albuquerque Old Town in Albuquerque, New Mexico, May 12-15, 2008.

CONTACT: Information on HiTEC 2008 can be found at http://www.imaps.org/hitec.

About SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc.  

Founded in 2000, with headquarters in Austin, Texas and manufacturing in Starkville, Mississippi, SemiSouth is a privately held silicon carbide (SiC) based semiconductor company. As an industry leader in the development and manufacture of SiC electrical components and materials for high-power, high-efficiency, harsh-environment power management applications, SemiSouth provides discrete power devices, and SiC epiwafers. SiC-based semiconductor devices offer significant advantages over competing products based on silicon and other semiconductor materials for power management applications.

SemiSouth and the SemiSouth logo are trademarks of SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc. All other company or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. For more information, visit us on the website at http://www.semisouth.com.