Page 141 - NEW Armstrong Book - 2

New Generation of SiC
MOSFETs Geared Toward
xEVs and Industrial
Applications
By Ming Su
wide operating temperature ranges. Legacy IGBT technol- ogy struggles to offer the new efficiency threshold required by these applications. With new mass-market–production capability and vast performance improvements, the newer silicon carbide MOSFET technology is well-suited to meet the demanding requirements of high-voltage power elec- tronic systems.
SiC outperforms Si for power devices
For power applications, SiC, as a semiconductor, vastly out- performs silicon in electrical breakdown, bandgap energy, electron saturation velocity, and thermal conductivity. This allows SiC MOSFETs to operate at innately higher voltages, temperatures, and frequencies while conducting higher power levels. Additionally, SiC is an extremely hard and rug- ged material, with a Mohs hardness of 13, compared
T
o enhance power system efficiency and power den- sity, many applications have been incrementally increasing switching frequencies and overall system
voltages. This trend has recently resulted in demand for high- voltage power semiconductor switches capable of operating with ultra-low conduction and switching losses. For instance, previous generations of electric vehicles used power sys- tems of only a few hundred volts; newer EV power systems are reaching up to 800-V battery voltage and moving toward higher switching frequencies to reduce passive component sizes.
This is also the case with data centers, photovoltaics, and a wealth of other renewable energy and industrial applica- tions. These new power-conversion systems require a break- through in solid-state power-switching devices to efficiently and reliably handle the high power, fast switching speed, and
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