Novel Top-Side Cooling Methods for Industrial Inverters with Discrete SMD Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors

Inhalt:
This study investigates the feasibility of a three-phase inverter design with discrete WBG SMDs with forced air cooling for an output power of 30kW with an efficiency above 99% at 100 kHz switching frequency for 400 V grids. Both GaN and SiC semiconductors are considered in hybrid Si-WBG and full-WBG three-level ANPCs. Novel thermal stacks using top-side cooled devices connected to the heatsink via a DBC or IMS substrate are considered. The results show that the power loop inductance is below 6 nH and that the targets can only be fulfilled with a full-WBG ANPC. The top-side cooled thermal stacks proposed achieve the highest output power and power density.