Power-Law Time Exponent n and Time-to-Failure in 4H-SiC MOSFETs: Beyond Fixed Reaction–Diffusion Theory

This work investigates bias-temperature instability (BTI) in 1700 V 4H-SiC MOSFETs under realistic 1 MHz switching conditions with simultaneous gate and drain stress. Threshold-voltage measurements reveal that the degradation does not follow the classical Reaction–Diffusion behavior typically assumed for silicon devices. Instead, the power-law exponent n shows a clear increase at the largest negative gate bias (−10 V), indicating a field-driven trap-generation mechanism. Temperature-dependent stress tests further show a negative activation energy (−0.466 eV), consistent with degradation accelerating at lower temperatures due to suppressed detrapping. The results demonstrate that conventional silicon BTI models cannot be directly applied to SiC technologies and that fixed-n lifetime extrapolation leads to significant errors. A bias-dependent, field-driven framework for estimating time-to-failure is proposed, offering more accurate and practical reliability prediction for high-power SiC converter applications.