SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE COMPRISING A HIGH-VOLTAGE CIRCUIT ELEMENT

摘要

The performance of high-voltage devices is often influenced by charge-creep effects in the package. In order to avoid the resultant degradation, a bleeder may be used between the device and the package. However, it has been found in practice that the use of a high-resistive bleeder may lead to a certain instability of the device during operation. According to the invention, the bleeder (8) is provided with a plurality of conductive regions (12, 13) which are distributed in such a way that, when a high voltage is applied across the bleeder, a non-linear potential profile across the bleeder is obtained, which harmonizes with the ideal potential profile without the bleeder, instead of a linear profile which would have been obtained in the absence of said conductive regions due to charge-loading effects, and which would result in the above-mentioned instability effects.