Current Instabilities in Large-Area Silicon Diodes: An Accurate TCAD Approach

Abstract

Fast-recovery diodes can exhibit negative differential resistance during reverse recovery which is associated with the formation of current filaments triggered by the presence of inhomogeneities along the device. Physics concerning the dynamics of current filaments has been widely analyzed in literature through numerical simulations. However, a method to clearly identify the elements that dominate on the current pattern formation is still not available since filaments can appear also in uniform structures. In this work, a novel TCAD approach is provided to suppress the numerical errors due to the discretization of the transport equations which allows us to analyze the effects of the junction depth and the presence of different doping inhomogeneities in the anode doping profile of large-area diodes.