POWER DIODES

Engr. Jahangeer Badar Soomro

Email address: jahangir.soomro@iba-
suk.edu.pk

Electrical Power Conversion (EPC) Cluster Department of Electrical Engineering

 Diode

2 terminal device. Anode and Cathode.

VAK should be positive. It is FB and diode
conducts.
Low power silicon VAK= 0.7
For a power diode approximately
VAK=1.5??
VI Characteristics ( You are familiar)
PIV ( You are familiar)

Electrical Power Conversion (EPC) Cluster Department of Electrical Engineering

 Diode

• During on state there is going to be finite voltage drop across

diode (Vf) and Ia is current flowing through diode. So on
state loss or conduction loss= Vf * Ia.
• If it is above a certain limit, you will mount on heat sink. So
for diode you will mount it on heat sink. Small signal diodes
does not need heat sink.

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VI Characteristics of a Diode

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 Difference between Diode and Power Diode

• Power semiconductor diode is the “power level” counter

part of the “low power signal diodes”.

• The symbol of the Power diode is same as signal level diode.

However, the construction and packaging is different.

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 Difference between Diode and Power Diode

In Signal Diodes the doping level is same

and hence we get a PN Junction

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 Depletion Region

• Generally, depletion refers to reduction or decrease in

quantity of something. For example, oil depletion refers to
decrease in oil production from a particular oil well, region,
or geographic area over a given time. Similarly,
in semiconductor physics, the depletion region refers to a
region where flow of charge carriers are decreased over a
given time and finally results in empty mobile charge carriers
or full of immobile charge carriers
• Also called Space Charge Layer/Space Charge
Region/Depletion Zone.

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Depletion Region

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 Effect of Doping on width of depletion region

• The atom which loses an electron is called positive ion and the atom which
gains an extra electron is called negative ion. Positive ions are ready to
accept an electron and negative ions are ready to accept a hole.
• Doping means adding impurities to the semiconductor to improve its
electrical conductivity. When we add large amount of impurities to the
semiconductor, it will produces large number of free electrons in the n-type
semiconductor and large number of holes in the p-type semiconductor.
• The large number of free electrons in the n-type semiconductor repels from
each other and try to move towards p-side. However, before entering into p-
side, the free electrons meet positive ions at the depletion region. We know
that positive ions are ready to accept extra electrons. When the positive ions
accept the extra electrons, they become neutral atoms. In this manner large
number of free electrons fills the holes in positive ions and makes them
neutral.
• In the similar way, holes moving from p-side to n-side meets the negative
ions and makes them neutral atoms. In this manner, free electrons and holes
reduce the ions. Reduction of positive ions means reduction of depletion
region. Thus, the depletion region decreases.

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 Effect of Doping on width of depletion region

• In Simple Words we can say that “ In Heavily doped

semiconductors recombination rate is very fast because of
large number of charge carriers and hence width of
depletion region decreases and vice versa.

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Effect of Doping on width of depletion region

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 Structure of Power Diode

• The structure of the power diode is little different from the small
signal diodes

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 Structure of Power Diode

• there is heavily doped n+ substrate forming cathode of power diode

• On n+ substrate, lightly doped n- epitaxial layer is grown. This layer is
also known as drift region.
• The N- layer is the key feature of the power diode which makes it
suitable for high power applications. This layer is very lightly doped,
almost intrinsic and hence the device is also known as PiN diode,
where i stands for intrinsic. As we can see in the figure above that the
net charge neutrality of the space charge region is still maintained as
was the case in signal diode but the thickness of space charge region
is quite high and deeply penetrated into the N- region

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Structure of Power Diode

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 Structure of Power Diode

• This is due to its light doping concentration, as we know

that the thickness of space charge region increases with
decrease in doping concentration. This increased thickness
of depletion region or the space charge region helps the
diode to block larger reverse biased voltage and hence
have a greater breakdown voltage. However adding this N-
layer significantly increases the ohmic resistance of the
diode leading to more heat generation during forward
conduction state. Hence power diodes come with various
mountings for proper heat dissipation.
• Hence power diodes have more voltage drop as compared
to signal diodes.

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Switching Characteristics of Power Diode

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Switching Characteristics of Power Diode

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Switching Characteristics of Power Diode

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Switching Characteristics of Power Diode

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Switching Characteristics of Power Diode

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 Reverse Recovery Characteristics

• When a diode is in forward conduction mode, a sudden

reversal of the polarity of the applied voltage would not stop
the diode current at once. But the diode continues to
conduct in the opposite direction due to minority carriers
that remain stored in pn-junction and the bulk
semiconductor material. Fig.2 shows the effect of minority
carriers on the turn off characteristics of the power diode.

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Reverse Recovery Characteristics

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Reverse Recovery Characteristics

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 Reverse Recovery Time trr

• Reverse Recovery time is time required for the diode to change

from Forward Bias to Reverse Bias.
OR
• The trr is defined as the time between the instant forward diode
current(IF) becomes zero and the instant reverse recovery
current(IRRM) decays to 25% of its peak reverse value IRRM.

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 Forward Recovery Time

• Forward Recovery time is time required to change from Revrese

Bias to Forward Bias.
• Generally reverse recovery dominates over forward recovery time
because less minority carrier move.

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Derivation for reverse recovery charge Qrr

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Derivation for reverse recovery charge

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Derivation for Maximum Reverse Recovery Current

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 Conclusion from derived expressions

• Thus it can be inferred from the above equations

that the peak reverse recovery current and reverse
recovery time depend on the charge stored in the
diode QRR and rate of change of current. The charge
QRR is in-turn dependent on the diode forward
current. Hence the reverse recovery current
depends on the diode forward current.

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Soft Recovery and Abrupt Recovery

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 Video On Reverse Recovery Characteristics

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXWskHsBxT0
• A video of 10 minutes discussing reverse recovery time concept.

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 Softness Factor and Reverse Recovery Time

• As discussed the formula and concept of

• In the case of fast recovery diode, the time taken by the current to decay (tb)
will be smaller in comparison to the time taken by the current to reach its
negative peak (ta). On the other hand, for a soft recovery diode, the situation
will be the reverse. That is, here, tb will be larger in comparison to ta.
• It is also seen that the softness factor gives a measure
of semiconductor losses incurred during switching. Greater is this ratio,
greater will be the switching loss. From this, one can conclude that when
soft-recovery diodes are used, the losses experienced by the
semiconductor switching are more than those encountered when fast
recovery diodes are used.

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 Softness Factor and Reverse Recovery Time

• Greater is the reverse recovery time, slower will be the diode and
vice-versa. Thus the diodes with lesser reverse recovery time are
preferred, especially when the requirement is of high switching
speed.

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