Abstract The analysis of a vertical insulated base transistor (MOS-bipolar Darlington power device with cellular layout) is discussed. The device operation is investigated in the framework of a schematic representation of the output characteristics and by means of 2D numerical simulation. A new design using a P−-diffusion interconnecting the P-type regions is proposed to improve the device breakdown voltage. Several cellular and stripe geometries were implemented with a double metal layer technology. Experiments corroborate the simulation results pointing out that the IBT shows a low on-resistance and fast switching times. For the sake of comparison of their electrical characteristics VDMOS and IGBTs were also fabricated with the same process.