High temperature packaging of 50 kW three-phase SiC power module

Research on silicon carbide (SiC) power electronics has shown their advantages in high temperature and high efficiency applications. This paper presents a SiC JFET based, 200°C, 50 kW three-phase inverter module and evaluates its electrical performance. With 1200 V, 100 A rating of the module, each switching element is composed of four paralleled SiC JFETs (1200 V/25 A each) and two anti parallel SiC Shottky Barrier Diodes (SBDs). The substrate layout inside the module is designed to reduce package parasitics. Then, experimental static characteristics of the module are obtained over a wide range of temperature, and low on-state resistance is shown up to 200°C. A gate driver, with different turn-on, turn-off gate resistances and RCD network, is designed to optimize the switching performances. The module is verified to have low power loss, fast switching characteristics at 650 V dc bus voltage, 60 A drain current, in both simulation and experiments. Finally, switching time and losses, obtained from simulation and experiment, are compared.