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In this study, design considerations of gate driver for silicon carbide (SiC) power devices is discussed. The work is focused in minimizing the common-mode current injection into the control circuit, thereby adapting the gate circuit to operate at higher dv/dt of fast switching transients. By reducing the common-mode interference with the control circuit, the signal integrity can be increased, spurious...
SiC-MOSFETs have attracting increasing attention because of their outstanding characteristics that contributes to high efficiency and high power density of power converters. However, compared to conventional Si-IGBTs, SiC-MOSFETs are susceptible to false triggering, because they tend to generate large switching noise due to ultrafast switching capability and have a lower threshold voltage in high...
Active gate driving has been shown to provide reduced circuit losses and improved switching waveform quality in power electronic circuits. An integrated active gate driver with 150 ps resolution has previously been shown to offer the expected benefits in GaN-based converters. However, the use of low-voltage, high-speed transistors limits its output voltage range to 5 V, too low for many emerging SiC...
In this paper, a comparative evaluation between a commercial 3.3 kV/400 A Si-IGBT and a 3.3 kV/400 A SiC MOSFET power module in half-bridge configuration is presented. With a constant current of 250 A, a lower forward voltage (VDS) drop of 1.6 V is obtained for SiC MOSFET at 300 K compared to Si IGBT. At 400 A, the difference is reduced to 1.3 V. SiC MOSFET offers an on-state resistance of 8.7 mΩ,...
1700V SiC modules were built with next-generation SiC MOSFETs, with 25°C RDSON per MOSFET cut approximately 50% from existing commercial SiC MOSFETs. Additionally, the external SiC anti-parallel diode was eliminated in favor of using the SiC MOSFET body diode during the dead time. The resulting 1700V SiC module used only 32% of the SiC chip area, yet reduced the 25°C module RDSON from 8mΩ to 5mΩ,...
This paper proposes a transformer based self-starting boost converter for thermoelectric energy harvesting, which operates even when polarity inversion of thermoelectric generator (TEG) occurs. TEG is used to convert thermal energy into electrical energy. Due to the Seebeck effect, an open circuit voltage of the TEG is proportional to the number of thermocouples in series and to the temperature difference...
In this paper, a resonant switched-capacitor dc-dc converter is proposed for data center application. The proposed converter possesses features such as high efficiency, high power density and light-weight. Zero current switching (ZCS) can be achieved with the resonant operation, which allows the converter operating under high efficiency. Proper switching device selection and in-depth power loss analysis...
Hybrid DC Breakers (HCBs) are crucial components in modern DC systems. Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristors (IGCTs) are widely used in high voltage HCBs due to their controllable turn-off capabilities under high power conditions. The focus of this paper is on the optimization of operation temperature when Gate Commutated Thyristors (GCTs) are applied in HCB applications. The operation conditions...
Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs have been widely studied in high frequency applications. The switching performance, however, is limited with the existence of the parasitic elements. One critical issue is the susceptibility of the gate-source voltage to the parasitic elements, rendering the possibility of spurious operation of the SiC MOSFETs. This paper conducts comprehensive investigations on the impact...
This paper presents dV/dt control technology that enables lower switching loss and surge, especially higher speed switching of silicon carbide (SiC) devices. This technology is a surge reduction method using a high-speed passive gate driver that independently controls turn-on and turn-off events. Experimental results for a prototype gate driver confirmed that switching loss can be reduced by half.
Recently, with research and development of SiC power devices, 1.2 kV SiC MOSFETs have become commercially available. The parasitic parameters, such as output capacitance, in each power device are not identical, because they depend on the device structure and material properties. Therefore, voltage sharing of turn-off operations under series-connection conditions of the power devices may be affected...
A general fault diagnosis method is proposed for modular dc-dc converter system. The magnetic component voltage in each module is chosen as diagnostic signal, which can be easily obtained by adding an auxiliary winding into each magnetic core. Based on the feature of these signals, two logical hardware circuits are designed to achieve fast fault detection for different demands. Fault can be detected...
The reverse recovery characteristics of the body diodes of planar and double-trench SiC MOSFETs are experimentally analyzed in switching tests and compared. The body diode of the trench SiC MOSFET shows improved performance, so that using an anti-parallel SBD to suppress the reverse recovery behavior becomes unnecessary. Following the switching tests, the devices are operated in continuous mode in...
This paper presents a high performance 12 kW motor drive system for an aerospace application. In order to achieve higher power density and reliability, the system uses a PMSM motor, SiC MOSFET inverter, high performance PWM control, and liquid cooling with phase change material. A power density of 33 KW/KG was achieved for the power inverter and control electronics excluding the cooling loop, and...
This paper proposes an Active Gate Current Control (AGCC) strategy for non-insulating gate WBG devices, for example, gallium nitride gate-injection-transistor (GaN-GIT) and silicon carbide super junction transistor (SiC-SJT). It provides a tool for power converter designers to further improve the converter efficiency and to extend the life time of those higher cost power transistors. By continuously...
Owing to the high current density but smaller die area of SiC components, high current SiC power modules typically feature a large number of parallel connected dies. Due to the faster electrical dynamics of these power modules, and the inherent mismatch of properties between the dies, certain dies can be poorly utilized — requiring either more dies to achieve a given current rating or a de-rating...
With switching transients as fast as 100 V/ns and a low threshold voltage of 1–2 V, GaN FETs in bridge-leg topologies are potentially vulnerable to crosstalk and the resultant unwanted partial turn-on, noise interference, and increased losses. Constant-strength gate drivers for GaN FETs limit switching speed to suppress crosstalk. In this work, active gate driving is shown to permit faster switching,...
Silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor technology has successfully penetrated several silicon (Si) application markets and is gaining momentum due to higher voltage withstand capability, higher switching capabilities (i.e., 100s of kHz), and ability to withstand higher operating temperatures (i.e., more than 200°C). When properly applied, SiC MOSFETs can switch in nanoseconds making this a promising...
Vertical GaN power semiconductors promise higher power with faster switching speeds but the development of this technology has been slowed. This is due to the expense and lack of familiarity with GaN substrates. This paper will detail the functionality of HRL's cutting-edge vertical GaN transistor which is mounted onto a specially made PCB and tested. The testing consists of a static characterization...
This paper presents a selective harmonics reduction for a 3(n+1) shared switch inverter topology utilizing optimal arrangement of the n-modulated signal. Under different modulation indices and operating power frequencies the purpose of the proposed procedure is to select an optimal load connection and/or modulation offsetting based on the desired objective function. Three performance indices are studied...
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