A semiconductor substrate having a first main surface and a transistor cell includes a drift region, a body region between the drift region and the first main surface, an active trench at the first main surface extending into the drift region, a gate insulating layer at sidewalls and a bottom side of the active trench, a gate conductive layer in the active trench, a source region in the body region, and adjacent to the active trench, a body trench at the first main surface extending into the drift region, the body trench being adjacent to the body region and to the drift region, an insulating layer at sidewalls and at a bottom side of the body trench, the insulating layer being asymmetric with respect to an axis extending perpendicular to the first main surface at a center of the body trench, and a conductive layer in the body trench.

A method for processing a semiconductor carrier is provided, the method including: providing a semiconductor carrier including a doped substrate region and a device region disposed over a first side of the doped substrate region, the device region including at least part of one or more electrical devices; and implanting ions into the doped substrate region to form a gettering region in the doped substrate region of the semiconductor carrier.

Most semiconductor devices manufactured today, have uniform dopant concentration, either in the lateral or vertical device active (and isolation) regions. By grading the dopant concentration, the performance in various semiconductor devices can be significantly improved. Performance improvements can be obtained in application specific areas like increase in frequency of operation for digital logic, various power MOFSFET and IGBT ICs, improvement in refresh time for DRAMs, decrease in programming time for nonvolatile memory, better visual quality including pixel resolution and color sensitivity for imaging ICs, better sensitivity for varactors in tunable filters, higher drive capabilities for JFETs, and a host of other applications.

A vertical semiconductor device (e.g. a vertical power device, an IGBT device, a vertical bipolar transistor, a UMOS device or a GTO thyristor) is formed with an active semiconductor region, within which a plurality of semiconductor structures have been fabricated to form an active device, and below which at least a portion of a substrate material has been removed to isolate the active device, to expose at least one of the semiconductor structures for bottom side electrical connection and to enhance thermal dissipation. At least one of the semiconductor structures is preferably contacted by an electrode at the bottom side of the active semiconductor region.

Provided are a power device having an improved field stop layer and a method of manufacturing the same. The method can include performing a first ion implant process by implanting impurity ions of a first conductive type into a front surface of a semiconductor substrate to form an implanted field stop layer where the semiconductor substrate is the first conductive type. The method can include performing a second ion implant process by implanting impurity ions of the first conductive type into a first part of the implanted field stop layer such that an impurity concentration of the first part of the implanted field stop layer is higher than an impurity concentration of a second part of the implanted field stop layer.

A method of manufacturing semiconductor devices in a semiconductor wafer comprises forming charge compensation device structures in the semiconductor wafer. An electric characteristic related to the charge compensation device structures is measured. At least one of proton irradiation and annealing parameters are adjusted based on the measured electric characteristic. The semiconductor wafer is irradiated with protons and annealed based on the at least one of the adjusted proton irradiation and annealing parameters. Laser beam irradiation parameters are adjusted with respect to different positions on the semiconductor wafer based on the measured electric characteristic. The semiconductor wafer is irradiated with a photon beam at the different positions on the wafer based on the photon beam irradiation parameters.

A method of producing a semiconductor device is presented. The method comprises: providing a semiconductor substrate having a surface; epitaxially growing, along a vertical direction (Z) perpendicular to the surface, a back side emitter layer on top of the surface, wherein the back side emitter layer has dopants of a first conductivity type or dopants of a second conductivity type complementary to the first conductivity type; epitaxially growing, along the vertical direction (Z), a drift layer having dopants of the first conductivity type above the back side emitter layer, wherein a dopant concentration of the back side emitter layer is higher than a dopant concentration of the drift layer; and creating, either within or on top of the drift layer, a body region having dopants of the second conductivity type, a transition between the body region and the drift layer forming a pn-junction (Zpn). Epitaxially growing the drift layer includes creating, within the drift layer, a dopant concentration profile (P) of dopants of the first conductivity type along the vertical direction (Z), the dopant concentration profile (P) in the drift layer exhibiting a variation of a concentration of dopants of the first conductivity type along the vertical direction (Z).

A symmetrically-bidirectional bipolar transistor circuit where the two base contact regions are clamped, through a low-voltage diode and a resistive element, to avoid bringing either emitter junction to forward bias. This avoids bipolar gain in the off state, and thereby avoids reduction of the withstand voltage due to bipolar gain.

To restrict the deterioration of properties in a semiconductor device due to hydrogen, provided is a semiconductor device including a semiconductor substrate; a hydrogen absorbing layer that is provided above a top surface of the semiconductor substrate and formed of a first metal having a hydrogen absorbing property; a nitride layer that is provided above the hydrogen absorbing layer and formed of a nitride of the first metal; an alloy layer that is provided above the nitride layer and formed of an alloy of aluminum and a second metal; and an electrode layer that is provided above the alloy layer and formed of aluminum. A pure metal layer of the second metal is not provided between the electrode layer and the nitride layer.

Methods of maintaining a state of a memory cell without interrupting access to the memory cell are provided, including applying a back bias to the cell to offset charge leakage out of a floating body of the cell, wherein a charge level of the floating body indicates a state of the memory cell; and accessing the cell.