Conductivity Modulation Enhancement in Thyristors Featuring Additional Interchip Carrier Injection for Ultrahigh Pulse Current Capability

In this work, a conductivity modulation enhancement method featuring additional interchip carrier injection is proposed for achieving ultrahigh pulse current capability of thyristor devices. Unlike conventional high-voltage thyristors, where carrier injection is confined to the anode and cathode of a single device, the proposed approach employs multiple relatively low-voltage thyristors, enabling additional carrier injection between the adjacent thyristors. This configuration increases the total carrier injection, while the relatively short drift region in each thyristor reduces carrier recombination. Together, these effects raise the overall carrier concentration within the thyristors, enhance conductivity modulation, and facilitate ultrahigh pulse current capability. TCAD simulations confirm that the proposed method leads to higher carrier concentration and lower conduction resistance compared to traditional single-device configuration. To realize the enhanced injection method effectively, an embedded stacking design is adopted, which serves to minimize parasitic inductance and ensures the performance potential is fully exploited in achieving ultrahigh current rise rate (<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">di/dt</i>) and peak current (<italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">I</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><roman>peak</roman></sub>). Experimental results under 3.6 kV/ 0.25 μF demonstrate <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">I</i><sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><roman>peak</roman></sub> of 6439 A and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">di/dt</i> of 162 kA/μs—representing over 45% and 105% improvements, respectively, compared to conventional configuration. These findings confirm that additional interchip carrier injection is a viable method for enhancing the pulse current capability of thyristor-based pulsed power systems. It should be noted that the current implementation remains at the experimental stage, and practical deployment still poses certain engineering challenges.