A power device or module in silicon carbide, gallium nitride or silicon, such as a MOSFET, an IGBT or a GaN transistor, from application and mission requirements through substrate and epitaxy supply, device design, process development, prototypes and characterisation, package and module development, application evaluation, reliability and ruggedness qualification and customer and automotive qualification to the production ramp, wafer size transitions, cost-down and end of life.
Power and compound semiconductor lifecycle: 13 stages, 13 gates of its own and 11 hand-offs to the Product lifecycle, from Application & Mission Requirements to End of Life.
13 stages, 13 gates of its own and 11 hand-offs to the Product lifecycle, 3 of the gates technical readiness reviews (TR). Each stop opens its stage; each sign opens its gate. Point at a stop or tab to it to read what the stage is for. What the codes mean
In collaboration with The Digital Electronics Blog (opens in a new tab)
A dashed sign with a TR tag is a technical readiness review gate.
An outlined sign with an arrow is a hand-off: the gate is owned by the Product lifecycle, where this lifecycle hands its work on.
In collaboration with The Digital Electronics Blog (opens in a new tab)
Turning a target application, such as an electric vehicle traction inverter, an onboard charger, an 800-volt vehicle architecture, an industrial drive, a solar or storage inverter or a data-centre power supply, into device requirements: voltage class, current rating, switching frequency, losses, short-circuit and avalanche needs, temperature range and the mission profile the part must survive.
Concept approval gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Concept approval)Application requirements agreed gate
Securing the starting material: silicon carbide substrates and epitaxy, gallium nitride epitaxy on silicon, silicon carbide or sapphire, or silicon wafers for IGBTs and MOSFETs.
An outlined sign with an arrow is a hand-off: the gate is owned by the Product lifecycle, where this lifecycle hands its work on.
Designing the power device itself: the cell structure, such as a planar or trench MOSFET, a lateral GaN transistor or an IGBT with its field stop, the drift layer, the edge termination that holds the blocking voltage, the gate design and the layout, simulated with TCAD for breakdown, on-resistance, switching, short-circuit withstand and the electric field at the gate oxide.
Developing the wafer process that builds the device: for silicon carbide, high-temperature implantation and activation anneal, gate oxide growth and interface treatment, ohmic contacts and backside thinning; for gallium nitride, the epitaxial stack, passivation and field plates; for silicon IGBTs, the field stop and backside processing.
Running the first device wafers through the baseline and measuring them: static characteristics such as blocking voltage, leakage, on-resistance and threshold voltage, dynamic switching with the double pulse test, body diode and reverse recovery, avalanche and short-circuit ruggedness and threshold stability, then correlating the results with the design and shipping engineering samples.
First wafers out gateDevice characterisation complete gateEngineering samples gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Engineering samples)
Putting the die into discrete packages and power modules that can carry the current, remove the heat and keep stray inductance low: substrates, die attach by solder or sintering, top-side interconnect, encapsulation, baseplates and cooling.
Showing the device or module working in the circuit it was designed for: evaluation boards and reference designs, gate drive recommendations, switching loss and efficiency measurements, electromagnetic interference behaviour, thermal performance in the customer's cooling system, and released simulation models and loss calculation data so customers can design in.
Application validated gateCustomer design-in agreed gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Design-in review)
Proving the device survives its mission profile: high-temperature reverse bias, high-temperature gate bias, humidity with bias, temperature cycling, intermittent operating life and power cycling, gate oxide lifetime and threshold drift, body diode degradation, avalanche and short-circuit robustness and cosmic ray robustness, run to AEC-Q101 for automotive discretes and to JEDEC methods, with wide bandgap specific checks on top, followed by qualification of the package or module itself.
Qualification start gateDevice qualified gateTR3, technical readiness reviewModule qualified gate
Qualifying the part with each customer once the design-in is agreed: customer qualification support, customer-specific requirements, audits of the fab and assembly sites, the production part approval process with its control plan and part submission warrant for automotive customers working to IATF 16949, and the production release with a long-term supply commitment.
Production part approval and release gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Production release)
Ramping wafer starts, epitaxy and assembly capacity to meet demand while holding yield and quality: statistical process control, production test and screening such as gate stress and burn-in where the plan requires it, outlier detection, field monitoring and allocation of scarce substrate and capacity across customers.
Volume ramp gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Volume ramp)Ramp complete gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Ramp complete)
An optional platform or cost-down programme, not a step every new device takes: moving a device or a whole platform to a larger substrate diameter, for example from 150 mm to 200 mm silicon carbide, to lower cost per die.
Wafer size transition approved gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Lifecycle review)Larger wafer equivalence shown gate
Lowering cost and keeping the product competitive once it is in volume: yield and defect improvement, die shrinks and next device generations, thinner substrates, larger wafers, second-source materials, assembly cost reductions and test time reduction, each change qualified and notified to customers under change control.
Cost-down change qualified gateLifecycle review gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Lifecycle review)
Withdrawing a power device or module in an orderly way when a new generation replaces it or material and capacity move on: discontinuance notice within the period agreed with customers, last-time-buy orders, final wafer starts and assembly builds, migration guidance to the successor and records retained for the life of the vehicles and equipment that use it.
Last-time buy gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Last-time buy)Last-time ship gate, owned by the Product lifecycle (Last-time ship)
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