Wide-bandgap semiconductors have made and are continuing to make a major impact on the power electronics world. The most common commercially available wide-bandgap semiconductors for power electronics applications are SiC and GaN devices. This paper focuses on the newest devices emerging that are made with these wide-bandgap materials. The static and dynamic characterization of six different SiC MOSFETs from different manufacturers are presented. The static characterization consists of the output characteristics, transfer characteristics and device capacitances. High temperature (up to 150 °C) static characterization provides an insight into the dependence of threshold voltage and on-state resistance on temperature. The dynamic characterizations of the devices are conducted by performing the double-pulse test. The switching characteristics are also tested at high temperature, with the presented results putting an emphasis on one of the devices. A comparison of the key characterization results summarizes the performance of the different devices. The characterization of one of the SiC MOSFETs is then continued with a short-circuit failure mode operation test. The device is subjected to non-destructive and destructive pulses to see how the device behaves. The non-destructive tests include a look at the performance under different external gate resistances and drain-source voltages. It is found that as the external gate resistance is increased, the waveforms get noisier. Also, as the drain-source voltage is increased, the maximum short-circuit current level rises. The destructive tests find the amount of time that the device is able to withstand short-circuit operation. At room temperature the device is able to withstand 4.5 μs whereas at 100 °C, the device is able to withstand 4.2 μs. It is found that despite the different conditions that the device is tested at for destructive tests, the energy that they can withstand is similar. This paper also presents the static and dynamic characterization of a 600 V, 2A, normallyoff, vertical gallium-nitride (GaN) transistor. A description of the fabrication process and the setup used to test the device are presented. The fabricated vertical GaN transistor has a threshold voltage of 3.3 V, a breakdown voltage of 600 V, an on-resistance of 880 mΩ, switching speeds up to 97 V/ns, and turn-on and turn-off switching losses of 8.12 µJ and 3.04 µJ, respectively, demonstrating the great potential of this device / MS / A key part in a power electronics circuit is the switch component. Currently, the devices usually used as the switch are made from silicon. As the performance limits of silicon are reached though, wide-bandgap semiconductors are proving to be a promising alternative to silicon semiconductors. These wide-bandgap switches will allow for higher powers, higher efficiency and higher temperature operation. The technology is still novel though and so new devices are still being developed. This paper focuses on showing the performance of the newest devices emerging that are made with these wide-bandgap materials. To demonstrate the performance potential of a switching device, the non-switching and switching behavior need to be tested. These tests are described and the results are shown for both Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors which are the most common wide bandgap semiconductors. The failure mode operation of one of the SiC devices is also tested. A common failure in power electronics is a short circuit failure where the switch is turned on for a long amount of time and kept on for too long, eventually leading to the device breaking destructively. To understand the limits and capabilities of these devices in a short circuit failure, non-destructive and destructive tests are explained and demonstrated.

This thesis investigates the effects of low temperatures on Silicon Germanium (SiGe) Hterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBT) BiCMOS technology. A comprehensive set of dc measurements were taken on first, second, third and fourth generation IBM SiGe technology over a range of temperatures (room temperature to 43K for first generation, and room temperature to 15K for the rest). This work is unique in the sense that this sort of comprehensive study of dc characteristics on four SiGe HBT technology generations over a wide range of temperatures has never been done before to the best of the authors knowledge.