Design for life - part 3

Paul Horner, MD of Advance Product Services Ltd talks about how his experiences leading a power supply repair
house has enabled their engineering team to offer ultra reliable bespoke DC power supply designs and how you
can avoid some of the pi%alls in the design stage.

Last week we looked at film capacitors
and saw how selec(ng the wrong
material for the applica(on can have
very serious consequences.
This week we will look at Power
MOSFETS and uncover some surprising
factors which have a big impact on long
term reliability.
Power MOSFETs
Generally speaking, power
semiconductors are among the group of
components least prone to ageing
effects. Assuming they are used within
their maximum ra(ngs and are well
thermally managed, they are very
reliable. However they account for more
than half of all service return failures.
A high dVds/dt can also cause the
parasi(c transistor (present in the
construc(on of all FET devices) to turn
on, especially at high temperature
where more thermally generated
minority carriers exist within it. If the
body diode of the FET is used to clamp
the drain to source voltage (as in a zero
voltage switching ‘ZVS’ resonant
converter), its reverse recovery (me
can be very long. This is due to the FET
body diode only being moderately fast
and the fact that the reverse voltage is
only the “on” voltage the FET, typically
around 1V.
Subsequent research has shown that even
at ground level, neutrons from cosmic ray
collisions in the upper atmosphere can
cause random failures in high voltage
MOSFETs over and above the rate
predicted by MTBF data from
manufacturers life tests. Reducing the
maximum Vds by even 6% has been shown
to decrease SEB failures by an order of
magnitude.
All the above scenarios are
exacerbated by high junc(on temperature,
so there is much to be gained from
running FETS well below their maximum
temperature and voltage ra(ngs, and
careful considera(on is
needed if the body diode
is u(lised in the
applica(on.

Typically this is because their

maximum ra(ngs have been exceeded
through knock-on effects of other
component failures, poor circuit design,
environmental influences such as spike
or surge, over-temperature or
mechanical stress.
In terms of the circuit design
however, there are subtle(es that can
contribute to a surprisingly large
propor(on of failures which tend to be
far less well appreciated:
Problems can occur in MOSFETS
where a high rate of rise of drain to
source voltage (dVds/dt) causes
capaci(ve charging of the FET gate. This
can switch the FET back on while it is
turning off—usually a destruc(ve event!
This is especially problema(c where the
“off” drive connects the gate to a voltage
slightly above zero, rather than to a
nega(ve poten(al. A nega(ve drive holds
the gate well below the threshold
voltage as the drain-source cap charges
and generally provides a much more
robust solu(on. It should be noted that
the gate threshold voltage typically
reduces to less than 70% of its 25°C value
at maximum junc(on temperature.
Typical ZVS resonant converter
Next me we will look at Optocouplers and
As the body diode is in fact the
explain why this innocent lile component
collector-base junc(on of the parasi(c
constutes such a high failure risk for
transistor, the unrecovered charge
power supplies and what you can do about
carriers cause the parasi(c transistor to
it!
turn on when Vds rises rapidly, allowing
large currents to flow in the device. To
make maFers worse, the diode Advance Product Services Ltd
recovery (me is even longer at higher
www.advanceproductservices.co.uk
temperatures. Paul Horner is Managing Director at Advance Product
Services Ltd.
There is a final scenario which
sounds like it has come straight from
science fic(on! It is known as Single
Event Burnout (SEB). SEB research
carried out as long ago as 1996 showed
that a high voltage MOSFET, biased off,
suppor(ng a voltage near to its
maximum ra(ng can suffer an
avalanche failure caused by a single sub
atomic par(cle colliding with a silicon
nucleus.