This paper presents a high power density silicon carbide (SiC)-based inverter, with a two-level voltage-source structure having forced air cooling, which provides a high volumetric power density of 70 kW/liter or 50 kW/kg in gravimetric terms. In order to achieve a power density greater than that of conventional inverters, the losses must be reduced or the cooling performance must be improved. Small lightweight SiC MOSFET power modules with directly soldered foil fins having good thermal conductivities, are developed in this study. The antiparallel SiC Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) are removed from the modules to improve the power density. Gate drivers are developed to reduce the switching losses and switching time. A prototype of the proposed high power density inverter, which includes the developed power modules and proposed gate driver, is fabricated. The volume and weight of the prototype inverter are approximately 0.5 liter and 660 g, respectively. Experimental results confirm that the prototype inverter can operate continuously with an output power up to 35 kW. Therefore, the power density of the prototype inverter is approximately 70 kW/liter or 50 kW/kg. The efficiency of the prototype inverter is found to be more than 98%. Hence, the measures undertaken in this study have been verified to improve the power density of the inverters. The proposed high power density inverters can be applied in future aircraft and other electric vehicles.
This paper presents a high-speed, low loss, and low noise gate driver for silicon-carbide (SiC) MOSFETs. We propose a gate boost circuit to reduce the switching loss and delay time without increasing the switching noise. The proposed gate driver enables converter-level efficiency improvements or power density enhancements. SiC MOSFETs have attracted significant interest as the next generation power devices. In general, the switching performance of power devices exhibits a trade-off between switching loss and noise. SiC-MOSFETs are expected to switch faster than Silicon IGBTs; however, faster switching might cause switching noise problems such as unwanted electromagnetic interferences (EMI). In this paper, we propose a gate driver topology that improves the switching performance of SiC-MOSFETs, and confirm the reduction in switching loss and delay time through experimental results.
This paper presents an optimized design example of high efficient inverter which consists of Silicon-Carbide (SiC) Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor-Field-Effect-Transistor (MOSFET) and optimized gate driver for SiC-MOSFETs. The purpose of this research is to optimize design of SiC-MOSFETs inverters. We confirmed that the proposed inverter is capable of operating efficiently with experimental results. The proposed gate driver can reduce switching losses and switching time without increasing surge and ringing voltage. We also analyzed effects of removing Schottky-Barrier-Diode (SBD) from SiC-MOSFETs power modules. Removing SBDs gives some positive effects that can not only reduce cost and size of inverters, but also can reduce switching surge and ringing voltage. SiC-MOSFETs without SBDs have bigger damping coefficient and smaller junction capacitance than SiC-MOSFETs with SBDs. The bigger damping coefficient can reduce ringing voltage. The smaller junction capacitance can reduce switching losses and noise. Index Terms--SiC, MOSFET, Inverter, EMI.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.