POWER MOSFET

I. INTRODUCTION
A power MOSFET is a specific type of field-effect transistor
(MOSFET) metal–oxide–semiconductor designed to handle
substantial levels of power. Compared to other power
semiconductor devices, such as a bipolar insulated-gate
transistor (IGBT) or thyristor, its main advantages are high
switching speeds and good low voltage efficiency. It shares
an isolated gate with the IGBT which makes driving easy.
They may be subject to low gain, sometimes to the extent
that the voltage of the gate must be higher than that of the
voltage under control.

N-channel, enhancement-mode, double diffused,

MetalOxide-Silicon, Field Effect Transistors are the high
voltage power MOSFETs available today. They perform the
same function as NPN, bipolar junction transistors except
the former are voltage controlled in contrast to the current
controlled bi-polar devices. Today MOSFETs owe their
ever-increasing popularity to their high input impedance and
the fact that they do not suffer from minority carrier storage
time effects, thermal runaway, or second breakdown as a
majority carrier unit.
II. BASIC STRUCTURE AND OPERATION

The best way to understand the operation of MOSFETs is to

consider the later MOSFET shown in Figure 1. With no
electrical bias applied to the G gate, no current can flow in
either direction under the Gate because there will always be
a PN block junction. When the gate is forward bias towards
the source S, as shown in Figure 2, the free hole carriers in
the p-epitaxial layer are repulsed away from the gate area,
creating a channel that allows electrons to flow from the
source to the drain. Note that since the holes have been
repulsed from the gate channel, the electrons are the
''majority carriers'' by default. This mode of operation is
called ''enhancement'' but it is easier to think of an
enhancement mode of operation as the unit is ''normally off''
i.e. the switch blocks the current until the signal is turned on.
The opposite is the depletion mode, which is usually a ''on''
device.
III. Static V-I Characteristics
Static Behavior: The static behavior is defined by the output
characteristics, on-resistance, and the transconductance of the
device.

Output Characteristics: The output characteristics for an N-

channel enhancement-mode Power MOSFET with the drain
current (Ids) as a function of drain-source voltage (Vds) with gate-
source voltage (Vgs) as a parameter are shown in Figure 3.