Technical Verification of an Over-2 kV New SiC Power Module Aimed at High-Speed Operation

Inhalt:
A new SiC power module with a voltage rating beyond 2 kV has been developed for renewable energy applications. By using SiC MOSFETs, a high-power density is achieved. To overcome the challenge of chip heating, an optimal structure has been established to improve heat dissipation. Additionally, the current flowing through the parallel chips is balanced by optimizing the circuit pattern. At the same time, oscillations which are commonly observed in SiC power modules are suppressed while maintaining high-speed switching performance. In this study, the over-2 kV SiC power module is operated in a 2-level topology switching at 4 kHz. As a reference, an A-NPC topology consisting of 7th generation Si IGBT modules switching at 2 kHz is implemented using 3 modules per phase with a common footprint. The results indicate that the SiC 2-level topology achieves a 100% increase in output current. Addition-ally, by increasing the carrier frequency from 2 kHz to 4 kHz, a reduction in the enclosure on the system side can also be expected.