Development of a High-Speed Switching Silicon Carbide Power Module

Abstract

We developed a silicon carbide (SiC) power module that can switch large currents at high speed. The withstand voltage of this power module is 1200 V, and two SiC MOSFETs are built-in and constitute a circuit for one inverter phase. This power module incorporates a snubber circuit for reducing the surge voltage generated by the SiC MOSFET for high-speed switching. In this study, switching at 270 A (a current density of 1000 A/cm 2 or more for the SiC MOSFET) was performed to evaluate this module. The turn-off switching time tf was ~10 ns, and the maximum dv/dt was 80 kV/us. Furthermore, this research examines the design and performance of the proposed power module.