Semikron Danfoss Young Engineer Award 2026

We are happy to announce that our consortium's researcher, Ruben Schnitzler from the University of Stuttgart, ILH, has been honoured with the prestigious Semikron Danfoss Young Engineer Award. He received the recognition for his work on the topic “Rapid Gate Switching Instability Characterization of SiC MOSFET at Extended Lifetimes using Accelerated Switching Frequencies of 40 MHz.”

Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs offer substantial efficiency and power density benefits, but reliability remains a key challenge for this technology. Ruben Schnitzler`s research focuses on gate-switching instability caused by repeated bipolar switching, which degrades the threshold voltage and reduces efficiency over the lifetime of a SiC MOSFET.

His work introduces 40 MHz accelerated gate-switching stress tests, validating their linear acceleration factor and enabling commercial qualification methods up to 80x faster than current industrial standards. The study also analyzes key challenges tied to high-frequency stress testing. The results show that not only gate-switching instability-related trapping, but also detrapping can be observed beyond 1012 switching cycles.

With the highly accelerated switching frequencies, it is shown that also this phenomenon is rather cycle-dependent than time-dependent and highly influenced by the positive gate-source voltage. Furthermore, it is shown that a simple saturation or reversal model is insufficient to describe gate switching instability at extended lifetime due to a third effect of retrapping occurring beyond 3⋅1012 switching cycles for some gate-source voltages.

This work concludes that an extrapolation at 3⋅1011 and even at 3⋅1012 switching cycles may yield a wrong approximation of the observed degradation in operation, which is not possible within commercial gate switching stress test systems, due to large measurement times of several 100 days. This work proposes a solution to this uncertainty by enabling characterization of gate switching instability at highly accelerated 40 MHz, which equates to 1014 switching cycles within 30 days, sufficient for all applications with 120.000 operating hours, even at a switching frequency of 250 kHz. Sensing parameters for lifetime extension of power semiconductor devices is key in all applications.

This deep investigation enhances understanding of degradation mechanisms in SiC transistors and contributes valuable insights for lifetime extension.

Congratulations on this pioneering work!

Established in 2012 by the SEMIKRON Foundation in cooperation with ECPE, the awards aim to inspire individuals and organizations to pursue groundbreaking developments in power electronics - a key technology for improving environmental protection, resource efficiency, and sustainability. Following years of successful collaboration, this tradition continues under the Semikron Danfoss name after the 2022 merger of SEMIKRON and Danfoss Silicon Power.

More information: https://www.semikron-danfoss.com/about-semikron-danfoss/news-events/news/innovation-and-young-engineer-awards-winners-2026

In the photo f.l.t.r: Peter Beckedahl, Ruben Schnitzler, Prof. Dr. Leo Lorenz

Photo © Marc Wiegelmann / VDE