Effects of Lightning Injection on Power-MOSFETs

Description

Lightning induced damage is one of the major concerns in aircraft health monitoring. Such short-duration high voltages can cause significant damage to electronic devices. This paper presents a study on the effects of lightning injection on power metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs). This approach consisted of pin- injecting lightning waveforms into the gate, drain and/or source of MOSFET devices while they were in the OFF-state. Analysis of the characteristic curves of the devices showed that for certain injection modes the devices can accumulate considerable damage rendering them inoperable. Early results demonstrate that a power MOSFET, even in its off-state, can incur considerable damage due to lightning pin injection, leading to significant deviation in its behavior and performance, and to possibly early device failures.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
33 2009_PHM_Lightning.pdf https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/publication/2009_PHM_Lightning.pdf

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  • dashlink
  • nasa
  • ames

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