Thermal modeling of single event burnout failure in semiconductor power devices

Experimental investigations of single event burnout (SEB) of power devices due to heavy ion impacts have identi®ed the conditions required to produce device failure. A key feature observed in the data is an anomalistic secondary rise in current occurring shortly after the ion strike. To verify these ®ndings including the thermally induced secondary plateau , simulations have been performed on the model single event burnout. The new models include additional thermally dependent electrical components to capture thermally induced physical e€ects. Through the inclusion of analytic temperature models coupled with the electrical model, the electrical response is predicted with reasonable accuracy. The simulations provide order-of-magnitude estimates as well as prediction of phenomenological features such as the secondary rise in current. This work represents a ®rst attempt to characterize thermal failure of power devices due to heavy ion impacts by including temperature dependent components that until now have not been modeled. The thermal model in the present work produces qualitative agreement with experiments on SEB that have been previously unexplained .