Reliability of Wide Bandgap Semiconductors for Automotive Applications

Wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor devices offer tremendous advantages over their silicon counterparts. Automotive applications benefit particularly from these advantages and, consequently, the automotive sector has emerged as the lead application for silicon carbide (SiC) devices and will also play an important role for gallium nitride (GaN) power devices. SiC components in particular have been used in commercial automotive products for several years and meet the usual qualification standards in terms of robustness and reliability. However, the silicon-based standards do not cover all peculiarities that the WBG devices exhibit. Bipolar degradation and gate switching instability (GSI) are only two of the effects that do not affect silicon. Also, the degradation of the devices throughout their service life can be different from that of silicon devices. Therefore, the existing standards have to be amended to offer the same security level for WBG devices, which is essential for the success in the extremely robust and reliability-sensitive automotive sector. Furthermore, the production maturity is not yet on the same level as the silicon technology. Besides conservative device design, particular screening tests are required. If such procedures are not viable, even complex and demanding burn-in tests might be implemented to cover all relevant defects and degradation mechanisms and ensure the quality that the automotive industry demands to maintain their reliability level. This work provides a review of the current status of WBG device reliability with respect to automotive requirements and of the ongoing activities to catch up with the level of silicon devices.

DOI 10.1109/TED.2026.3672721