Abstract
Power electronic components operating in radiation environments are exposed to different types of radiation effects such as single event, ionizing dose and displacement damage effects, which affect the device functionality through device failure or degradation. On top of the radiative stress, electronic devices in operating mode are exposed to aging effects which can have an effect on the device reliability. The individual or coupled interaction of such effects may cause a failure of the device or the whole system. In order to ensure reliable operation of electronic systems, it is important to assess those effects through testing and simulations.Recently, wide bandgap (WBG) materials such as SiC and GaN have been introduced into commercial power semiconductor device technologies as a candidate for replacing Si as a semiconductor material. However, their physical failure and degradation mechanisms are still not fully known. On top of that, since the technologies have developed, the test standards used for power devices testing in radiation environments, have not been brought up to date to be used with emerging technologies.In this work, short- and long-term reliability of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) WBG power technologies under radiation environment are investigated. Methodology for calculating reliability parameters and failure rates for SiC power technology in atmospheric radiation environment is proposed. Moreover, radiation sensitivity of SiC and GaN power technologies are assessed for single event effects and total ionizing dose supplemented by TCAD simulations.Coupled radiation and aging effects are studied through comparing radiation sensitivity of pristine and aged devices and through post-irradiation stressing in order to address the radiation induced reliability degradation. On top of that, power system radiation induced performance degradation is studied through experiment and SPICE simulation.