Diamond Power Electronics: From 1kV towards 10kV Breakdown Voltage

Abstract

The rapidly growing demand for power electronics to rout, control, and convert electrical power motivates recent research into devices based on ultra-wide-bandgaps semiconductors. Diamond-based semiconductor devices have drawn increasing attention in high-power applications due to diamond’s extraordinary electrical and physical properties. It has a 5.5 eV band gap and over 7.7MV cm−1 breakdown field. Diamond is also one of the best thermal conductors with thermal conductivity over 2200 Wm−1k−1, making it an ideal material for high power applications where heat dissipation is challenging [1]. To demonstrate diamond’s advantages in power electronics, diamond power diodes and transistors are fabricated with breakdown voltages much higher than devices based on other wide band-gap materials.