Operation of power electronic converters at cryogenic temperatures for utility energy conditioning applications

Review of the State-of-the-Art in Power Electronics Suitable for 10-KW Military Power Systems

“…5.4. This feature permits the reduction of the on-resistance further by paralleling a sufficient number of devices, which has been confirmed experimentally by Gardiner [46] in a 50-kW converter.…”

“…To date, the circuit models for the power diode, the IGBT, and the GTO have been developed [47][48][49] and confirms in Ref. 43 that the model assumptions stay valid in the temperature domain T ≥ 77 K. However, the device models available for MOSFETs are not particularly accurate at predicting the switching characteristics at 77 K as shown in the simulated and measured waveform for a top switch in a half-bridge inverter [46].…”

“…Since the operation of power devices, especially MOSFETs, at cryogenic temperatures has shown potential advantages, the development of power converters using currently available commercial devices operating at cryogenic temperatures has been investigated [46,[50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58].…”

“…For example, Marx [59] comments that soft-switching at low temperature is resulting no longer in a clear increase of power density and converter efficiency, but may even result in a reduction of converter efficiency. However, Gardiner [46] concluded that soft switching must be employed to achieve acceptable switching power loss for a 3-phase inverter at LNT.…”

Improving Performance of Cryogenic Power Electronics

“…He found that 3-4 times higher current pulse could be obtained at 77 K and extremely high conversion efficiencies of better than 99% might be achievable at cryogenic temperature for switch mode circuits when high temperature superconductors were used for the high current inductor [11], [19]. Gardiner et al demonstrated the operation of a 50 KW MOSFET based inverter at 77 K [20]. They found that at 77 K substrate diode conduction can be practically avoided, allowing for very short soft switching transition times.…”