The Japan Society of Applied Physics

5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

[RS-B] Wide Band Gap and Silicon Power: Vision to Reality

Coordinator: D. Hisamoto1
Moderator: I. Omura2
Panelists: H. Amano3, M. Higashiwaki4, M. Shimoyama5, T. Terashima6, Y. Uemoto7, H. Umezawa8
(1.Hitachi, Ltd.(Japan), 2.Kyushu Institute of Technology(Japan), 3.Nagoya Univ.(Japan), 4.NICT(Japan), 5.SUMCO Corp.(Japan), 6.Mitsubishi Electric Corp.(Japan), 7.Panasonic Corp.(Japan), 8.AIST(Japan))

In 1957, GE introduced p-n-p-n structure device, which is called silicon controlled rectifier (SCR), which is an alternative name of thyristor, with the price of 60USD for 300V-7A device. SCR commercialization triggered rapid advancement of “modern” power electronics. After SCR, GTO (1960s), Power MOSFEET (1970s) , IGBT (1980s) followed and contribute to power management and motor control. The device price has been dramatically reduced to couple of cents for 1 amp.

SiC device first commercialized in 1990s and GaN in 2000s. WBG devices are now widely used from traction to mobile PC adapters and shows significant impact to miniaturization of the system and efficiency improvement. GaO and diamond are under R&D and they are very attractive for future power semiconductors for special applications.

In this session, six specialist from Si, SiC, GaN, GaO and diamond devices will explain the current status of the material-device technology development and show clear vision and impact to the future power semiconductor device commercialization.