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In high voltage direct current (HVDC) converters, a series connection of semiconductor devices is often used to achieve the desired blocking voltage. In such configuration, an unequal voltage sharing may drive one or more devices into avalanche breakdown, eventually causing the failure of the entire group of devices. This paper presents the experimental evaluation of SiC MOSFETs from different manufacturers...
For the first time we report on detailed, quantitative reliability measurements and accelerated life data for > 1,300 of 900V, 10mOhm, 32mm2 SiC MOSFETs being developed for automotive and industrial applications. SiC MOSFETs were characterized and subjected to High-Temperature Reverse Bias (HTRB), High-Temperature Gate Bias (HTGB), Thermal Shock, and High-Humidity High-Temperature Reverse Bias...
In traditional battery systems, a large number of battery cells are usually connected in series and parallel with a fixed topology during operation to supply the desired voltage and current. However, this fixed configuration has low reliability, low fault tolerance, and voltage imbalance issue. This paper proposes a new modular and reconfigurable battery pack (MRBP) consisting of reconfigurable battery...
This paper presents a review on SiC MOSFET based 3-phase inverter lifetime prediction. The inverter-level lifetime prediction flowchart is first illustrated with the system failure rate and system Mean Time to Failure derived which integrate five in-series stresses. An overview of SiC MOSFET power module Physics-of-Failure is then presented. Following it are the step-by-step lifetime modeling comparison...
The Series-Resonant dc-dc converter (SRC) is widely applied in a large range of voltage and power. In most applications, fault tolerance is a highly desired feature and it is obtained through redundancy. This paper proposes a fault tolerance solution for the SRC, which could drastically reduce the need of redundancy. Using the proposed scheme, the full-bridge based SRC or multilevel based SRC can...
This paper describes a comprehensive modeling approach on reliability of fuses used in power electronic circuits. When fuses are subjected to current pulses, cyclic temperature stress is introduced to the fuse element and will wear out the component. Furthermore, the fuse may be used in a large variation of ambient temperature, e.g. in deserts and the accumulated damage in the fuse elements is gradually...
Microinverters are module-level power electronic (MLPE) systems that are expected to have a service life more than 25 years. The general practice for providing assurance in long-term reliability under humid climatic conditions is to subject the microinverters to ‘damp heat test’ at 85°C/85%RH for 1000hrs as recommended in lEC 61215 standard. However, there is limited understanding on the correlation...
Inverter is a definitive solution toward ac voltage regulation in a system having input dc voltage variation. This paper proposes, a novel single-stage single-phase buck-boost inverter called dual buck-boost inverter. It has the buck-boost function and requires only four active switches. It has no shoot-through worries and has improved reliability. In the proposed inverter, the body diodes of switches...
This paper presents a comprehensive study on degradation monitoring of SiC MOSFETs and propose a method to detect incipient faults for early warning in power converters and smart gate drivers. During the accelerated ageing tests (power cycling) several electrical parameters are measured to analyze critical signatures and precursors for early fault detection. Among those, gate leakage current is identified...
This paper introduces an In-Circuit Reliability Test System (ICRTS) for SiC MOSFETs and diodes that can test a large number of high-voltage devices by emulating real life voltage and current stress to get statistical endurance test results. One challenge of testing a large number of devices under real life stress is the unrealistic amount of power consumption. To overcome this challenge, the ICRTS...
A commercial discrete enhancement mode gallium nitride power component employing advanced package technology without conventional bond wire possesses the ability for bidirectional conduction. The gallium nitride power components can provide not only higher forward conductivity but also superior reverse conductivity. For the most part recent critical debates about the reverse conductivity of a GaN...
The PV inverter lifetime is affected by the installed sites related to different solar irradiance and ambient temperature profiles. In fact, the installation site also affects the PV panel degradation rate, and thus the long-term power production. Prior-art lifetime analysis in PV inverters has not yet investigated the impact of panel degradation. This paper thus evaluates the lifetime of PV inverters...
The Cascaded H-Bridge (CHB) topology is widely employed in high power and high voltage applications due to advantages of the low dv/dt, the low EMI noise, and the low filter inductance. An issue of this modular system is the possible unequal thermal stress of the power semiconductors in the cells, which is affecting the reliability and leads to maintenance costs and down-times. In this paper, the...
Mission Critical Application is a general term for any system whose loss could cause downtime in crucial operations for a company. Given the importance assumed by power converters in many critical systems, this research is conducted in the framework of the reliability engineering applied to a well-established medium voltage power converter in the industry environment. Condition monitoring techniques...
This paper analyzes the impact of current sensing inaccuracies due to aging and ambient condition variations on robust operation of PV inverter systems. A novel index for analyzing the robustness of grid-tied AC-stacked PV inverter architectures has been used, which provides an opportunity for comprehensive robustness evaluation by considering four major operational characteristics of grid-tied PV...
This paper presents an analytical framework, supplemented with experimental validation, for optimizing the value of the external gate resistance employed in power conversion circuits using EPC enhancement-mode GaN transistors. A second order analytical model of the GaN device is utilized to determine a function that relates the external gate resistance to the peak gate voltage during turn-on. The...
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