Review—Radiation Damage in Wide and Ultra-Wide Bandgap Semiconductors

The wide bandgap semiconductors SiC and GaN are already commercialized as power devices that are used in the automotive, wireless, and industrial power markets, but their adoption into space and avionic applications is hindered by their susceptibility to permanent degradation and catastrophic failure from heavy-ion exposure. Efforts to space-qualify these wide bandgap power devices have revealed that they are susceptible to damage from the high-energy, heavy-ion space radiation environment (galactic cosmic rays) that cannot be shielded. In space-simulated conditions, GaN and SiC transistors have shown failure susceptibility at ∼50% of their nominal rated voltage. Similarly, SiC transistors are susceptible to radiation damage-induced degradation or failure under heavy-ion single-event effects testing conditions, reducing their utility in the space galactic cosmic ray environment. In SiC-b…