Prediction of static characteristic parameters of an insulated gate bipolar transistor using artificial neural network

Abstract

Breakdown voltage (BV), on-state voltage (Von), static latch-up voltage (Vlu), static latch-up current density (Jlu), and threshold voltage (Vth), etc., are critical static characteristic parameters of an IGBT for researchers. Von and Vth can characterize the conduction capability of the device, while BV, Vlu, and Jlu can help designers analyze the safe operating area (SOA) of the device and its reliability. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer artificial neural network (ANN) framework to predict these characteristic parameters. The proposed scheme can accurately fit the relationship between structural parameters and static characteristic parameters. Given the structural parameters of the device, characteristic parameters can be generated accurately and efficiently. Compared with technology computer-aided design (TCAD) simulation, the average errors of our scheme for each characteristic parameter are within 8%, especially for BV and Vth, while the errors are controlled within 1%, and the evaluation speed is improved more than 107 times. In addition, since the prediction process is mathematically a matrix operation process, there is no convergence problem, which there is in a TCAD simulation.