Full SiC Power Module Research Articles

Modeling and Analysis of vgs Characteristics for Upper-Side and Lower-Side Switches at Turn-on Transients for a 1200V/200A Full-SiC Power Module.

In this work, a 1200V/200A full-SiC half-bridge power module was fabricated for high-power high-frequency application, and the characteristics of gate-source voltage () at turn-on transient under different output power was investigated via experiments, modeling, and simulation. Also, the comparison of the characteristics between the upper-side and lower-side was conducted. From experiments, the characteristics show negative spike issue and it becomes severe under higher output power conditions. On the other hand, the upper-side and lower-side show different characteristics, namely, the spike of upper-side is superimposed by a 83.3 MHz high frequency oscillation during the process of being pulled down, while the spike of lower-side contains no oscillation. The mechanisms behind the influence of output power on the spike characteristics and their difference between the upper-side and lower-side were studied via modeling and simulation. Equivalent RLC (resistance-inductance-capacitance) circuit models were proposed and established for the gate driver loops of the upper-side and lower-side based on the internal structure of the power module. With the help of the proposed models, characteristics of the upper-side and lower-side were simulated and compared with the experimental results. The trend of changes in the pulling-down and oscillation amplitude along with the increasing output power from simulation are consistent with that of the experimental results. In addition, different conditions of gate resistance for the SiC power module are compared. Through the comparison between the experiments and simulations, the validity of the proposed equivalent RLC circuit model and the rationality of the analysis about the mechanisms behind the characteristics at turn-on transient for SiC half-bridge power module are confirmed.

A High Performance Full SiC Power Module Based On a Novel Stacked DBCs Hybrid Packaging Structure

Abstract This paper proposed a novel stacked DBCs hybrid package structure and designed a low inductive 1200V/120A SiC half-bridge power module based on the package structure. Using the multi-layer structure of DBC+DBC, the main loop parasitic inductance of the power module has been reduced to 1.8nH by optimizing the three-dimensional commutation loop and using the mutual inductance cancellation concept. The module was designed and fabricated, the low inductance characteristics of the module was verified by dual pulse testing and power testing. Dynamic test results show that the module can switch safely with a low overvoltage under zero ohm external drive resistance, and the switching loss is reduced by 57% compared to commercial modules.

Switching Characterization and Short-Circuit Protection of 1200 V SiC MOSFET T-Type Module in PV Inverter Application

In this paper, a 1200 V, 100 A T-type full SiC power module is evaluated in a five-level T-type photovoltaic (PV) inverter. The T-type module is characterized with double pulse test, and based on the results, loss evaluation of the PV inverter is performed. The high power density of 27 W/in3 and 3 kW/kg, and the peak efficiency of 99.2% are achieved for the lab prototype. A de-sat based short-circuit protection scheme using commercial driver chip ACPL339J is presented and experimentally verified on the PV inverter prototype. With the presented circuit, less than 600 ns response time is realized, and a two-stage soft turn-off circuit with gate voltage clamping is implemented. A gate voltage stabilizer circuit without affecting the switching loss is also proposed to prevent false trigger. Experimental results show the superior performance of the T-type module-based PV inverter and demonstrate the effectiveness of the protection scheme.

Development of SiC Power Module and Loss Evaluation in DC-DC Converter Circuit Application

The thermal management of power module is one of the key important issues for power conversion circuit design. SiC power module is expected to give less conduction and switching loss than conventional Si device, which enables to facilitate the thermal management of a power conversion circuit. This paper develops 2in1 Full-SiC power module and studies the applicability for 600V→300V, 15kW DC-DC buck converter. The feasible thermal design of SiC power module to serve rated operation of the converter circuit is discussed based on the elemental experiments. The developed full-SiC power module realized lower loss and smaller converter circuit than conventional-Si power module.