Shi Yijun, Cai Zongqi, Huang Yun, He Zhiyuan, Chen Yiqiang, Cheng Liye, Lu Guoguang
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application of Electronic Component, China Electronic Product Reliability and Environmental Testing Research Institute, Guangzhou 510610, China.
Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Jul 21;13(7):1157. doi: 10.3390/mi13071157.
Bidirectional current-regulating ability is needed for AC light emitting diode (LED) drivers. In previous studies, various rectifier circuits have been used to provide constant bidirectional current. However, the usage of multiple electronic components can lead to additional costs and power consumption. In this work, a novel AlGaN/GaN lateral bidirectional current-regulating diode (B-CRD) featuring two symmetrical hybrid-trench electrodes is proposed and demonstrated by TCAD Sentaurus (California USA) from Synopsys corporation. Through shortly connecting the Ohmic contact and trench Schottky contact, the unidirectional invariant current can be obtained even with the applied voltage spanning a large range of 0-200 V. Furthermore, with the combination of two symmetrical hybrid-trench electrodes at each side of the device, the proposed B-CRD can deliver an excellent steady current in different directions. Through the TCAD simulation results, it was found that the device's critical characteristics (namely knee voltage and current density) can be flexibly modulated by tailoring the depth and length of the trench Schottky contact. Meanwhile, it was also demonstrated through the device/circuit mixed-mode simulation that the proposed B-CRD can respond to the change in voltage in a few nanoseconds. Such a new functionality combined with excellent performance may make the proposed B-CRD attractive in some special fields where the bidirectional current-limiting function is needed.
交流发光二极管(LED)驱动器需要具备双向电流调节能力。在以往的研究中,已使用各种整流电路来提供恒定的双向电流。然而,使用多个电子元件会导致额外的成本和功耗。在这项工作中,提出了一种新型的具有两个对称混合沟槽电极的AlGaN/GaN横向双向电流调节二极管(B-CRD),并由美国加利福尼亚州新思科技公司的TCAD Sentaurus进行了演示。通过短接欧姆接触和沟槽肖特基接触,即使施加电压在0至200 V的大范围变化,也能获得单向不变电流。此外,通过在器件两侧组合两个对称的混合沟槽电极,所提出的B-CRD能够在不同方向上提供出色的稳定电流。通过TCAD模拟结果发现,通过调整沟槽肖特基接触的深度和长度,可以灵活调制器件的关键特性(即拐点电压和电流密度)。同时,通过器件/电路混合模式模拟还表明,所提出的B-CRD能够在几纳秒内响应电压变化。这种新功能与优异性能相结合,可能会使所提出的B-CRD在一些需要双向限流功能的特殊领域具有吸引力。