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Efficiency improvement with silicon carbide based power modules

In the recent years, discrete SiC (silicon carbide) based devices have been introduced to the market. In this paper the utilization of SiC based diodes and switches in power modules will be presented, discussed and compared with Si-based power modules. Whereas SiC switches have the overall lowest dynamic losses, they show higher static losses due to the lack of conductivity modulation and the necessary chip size limitations due to the still high SiC base material price. The frequency dependence of the total losses of the various 1200V configurations (Si-IGBT + Si free wheeling diode, Si IGBT + SiC Schottky diode, SiC-JFET cascode + internal body diode of the cascode) shows, that a module solution containing a state of the art SiC switch will outperform all other options for switching frequencies > 20 kHz.

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Jan 31, 2011