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Research on high voltage (HV) silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductor devices has attracted much attention in recent years. This paper overviews the development and status of HV SiC devices. Meanwhile, benefits of HV SiC devices are presented. The technologies and challenges for HV SiC device application in converter design are discussed. The state-of-the-art applications of HV SiC devices are also reviewed. Index Terms-High voltage, SiC power semiconductor devices, SiC-based converter.Recently, the emerging HV SiC devices demonstrate the promising performance in terms of high voltage rating, low specific on-resistance and fast switching speed [56]. This section focuses on the characteristics of HV SiC devices versus their Si counterparts. A. Comparison to SiRecent breakthroughs in wide band gap (WBG) SiC material and fabrication technology have led to the development of high

Transient voltage unbalance is the major problem that limits the application of series-connected IGBTs in highvoltage and high-power converters. Asynchronous gate delay causes series-connected IGBTs not to turn-on and turn-off at the same time resulting in severely unbalanced voltage sharing. An active voltage balancing control technique is proposed in this paper to solve the asynchronous gate delay problem. By sampling the feedback signal caused by unbalanced voltage sharing, the microcontroller generates a time delay for the gate driver to compensate the asynchronous gate delay. The most vital part of active voltage balancing control, the status feedback circuit, is also discussed in detail in this paper. The function of the status feedback circuit and the effect of active voltage balancing control are verified in a two series-connected HV-IGBTs platform in rated operation (5 kV bus voltage and 600 A load current).

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Medium-voltage (MV) power electronics equipment has been increasingly applied in distribution grids, and high-voltage (HV) silicon carbide (SiC) power semiconductors have attracted considerable attention in recent years. This paper first overviews the development and status of HV SiC power semiconductors. Then, MV power-converter applications in distribution grids are summarized and the benefits of HV SiC in these applications are presented. Microgrids, including conventional and asynchronous microgrids, that can fully demonstrate the benefits of HV SiC power semiconductors are selected to investigate the benefits of HV SiC in detail, including converter-level benefits and system-level benefits. Finally, an asynchronous microgrid power-conditioning system (PCS) prototype using a 10 kV SiC MOSFET is presented.

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