SiC Power Module for Compact Power Conversion Equipment

Abstract

In order for wide bandgap semiconductor power devices to be practical use in various power electronics applications, a 2in1 600V75A power package with a 200 degree Celsius heat resistance was newly developed on the premise of mass production. This package designed to specify a low inductance of less than 24nH enables SiC and GaN-based devices to be driven with a high slew rate up to 5kA/us under hard-switching condition. Furthermore, this package encapsulated by a epoxy resin of a high heat resistance and equipped with thick Cu heat spreader allow these power devices to be driven up to 200 degree Celsius and dissipate heat in large quantities (thermal resistance Rth,jc: 0.6K/W), which is found to make cooling heat sink simplified. We introduced 50ASiC-MOSFET in this package, and verified the operation on a power conditioner for Solar Photovoltaic cells up to 4kW output. A high power conversion efficiency of 97.7% was measured by our SiC power packages on downsized cooling heat sink in 1/4 volume, which was more efficient than Si-IGBT module by 1.5%.

Influence of recovery characteristics on switching behavior of SiC MOSFETs

“…This prevents Si IGBTs from achieving fast switching speed in the turn-off period because of a long current tail limited by the recombination of electrons and holes, leading to a much higher switching loss than that of SiC MOSFETs. [1][2][3] Therefore, possible higher switching frequency operation with a faster switching speed of SiC MOSFETs than that of Si IGBTs would be one of the key issues in order to achieve an expected higher power density in the power electronics systems, [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] thus encouraging the development and commercialization of SiC MOSFETs [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] as well as their wide-scale applications. [22][23][24][25] However, the switching loss of SiC MOSFETs influenced the total loss in high switching frequency operation despite the significantly lower switching loss of SiC MOSFETs than that of Si IGBTs.…”

3.3 kV/1500 A power modules for the world’s first all-SiC traction inverter

“…5) Also, efficiency improvement and miniaturization of power inverters and converters by embedding SiC power devices have been reported. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] SiC unipolar devices, especially metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), have been attracting tremendous attention owing to their high speed switching characteristics and low on-resistance compared with Si bipolar devices. Discrete SiC-MOSFETs have been developed and commercialized by many companies for intermediate-voltage classes from 600 V to 2 kV.…”