Comparison between proton, laser, neutron test on Automotive MOSFETS for space application
Creators: name:  A. PESCE 
name:   F. PINTACUDA 
name:   M. MUSCHITIELLO 
Publisher: name: Proceedings of  the 9th European Conference for Aerospace Sciences. Lille, France, 27 June - 1 July, 2022
Year: 2022
Subjects: FLIGHT DYNAMICS
GNC
AVIONICS

description: Electronic systems in automotive, industrial, and avionics include several kinds of equipment such as power supplies, power distribution units, battery control electronics, DC/DC converters, and high-energy pulse circuits. The power applications of these systems are designed using Power Devices, which part numbers and their characteristics are chosen depending on the different applications requirements. The key features of these components are voltage breakdown capability, high-frequency operation, low on-state resistance, ease of paralleling, and temperature stability. Their availability for decades had spread their usage in all electronic equipment. Nowadays, the commercial availability of new Wide Band Gap (WBG) semiconductor devices, mainly based on Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride (SiC and GaN) materials, allows design engineers a few more freedoms during the design stages of an electronic power system due to their better performance respect the silicon devices. The main features of WBG materials are wide bandgap, high electric field breakdown in combination with reasonably high electron mobility, and high thermal conductivity, bringing the superior performance of the key parameters of the Power Devices such as low on-state voltage, low recovery charge, fast turn-on and turn-off, high blocking voltage, higher reliable operating junction temperature, high power density. The long-term goal of the power electronics industry is to embed power electronics into various applications, which can benefit from the use of WBG semiconductor devices by way of increased efficiency, reduced overall volume, and improved performance. Currently, the SiC Power Devices have a higher maturity level respect the GAN based counterparts, accordingly the new dedicated power systems in the Electric Vehicles automotive and Avionics, Solar, UPS mostly use SiC Power devices. For example, an automotive application of TESLA uses SiC Power MOSFETs in the Motor Control Units of electric vehicles. The electric vehicles request High Voltage Batteries (400V or 800V) and Power Devices able to manage a few thousand Amperes and Voltages. Thus, increasing radiation due to Space Weather poses greater risks for electrified automotive and aviation applications. In particular, the neutron flux increase could be observed and it can make high failure rate in power systems. The electrification of vehicles it is already started in the automotive field and in the next future avionics electric vehicles for urban mobility as well (https://www.airbus.com/innovation/zero-emission/urban-air-mobility.html), it will request massive use of SiC Power Devices. Especially in High Voltages applications, Power Devices could be sensitive to neutron interactions with the active area of the device. A considerable amount of scientific work was dedicated to this problem and a number of test standards were established, e.g. JESD89a and others. Most of the experiments focus on determining the failure rate of devices bombarded by a white line energy spectrum of neutrons, mimicking the energy distribution of neutrons at sea level. The objective of this study will be the comparison and correlation between test results obtained by neutron testing, proton testing, and laser testing on Automotive Si and SiC Power MOSFETS from STMicroelectronics for future use in space application.