Silicon carbide or SiC can be found in various electronic devices, from diodes to MOSFETs. These components provide superior performance over their silicon equivalents.
Wide band gap semiconductor silicon carbide IGBTs offer many advantages over their more conventional IGBT counterparts, and in this article, we’ll take a closer look at them as a high voltage power solution.
Cost
Silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors boast several advantages over their silicon counterparts, including higher blocking voltage, lower on state resistance and increased thermal conductivity. Due to these properties, SiC MOSFETs can operate at higher switching frequencies for reduced component size, cost and improved efficiency – making them suitable for high voltage applications like electric vehicle inverters or data center power supplies.
SiC is produced through an initial step of crystal growth in an electric furnace, similar to how diamonds are created. While most SiC production occurs from moissanite found in meteorites or corundum deposits and kimberlite mines, some small quantities may also be produced synthetically in laboratories.
Silicon carbide provides another advantage over silicon: reduced temperature volatility. Whereas Si-based MOSFET’s RDSon can change by more than an order of magnitude over an array temperature range, SiC MOSFETs typically vary only fractionally over time allowing more efficient operation at high temperatures without resorting to expensive cooling solutions.
The global silicon carbide MOSFETs market is projected to reach $4 billion by 2022 due to rising demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles. Asia Pacific currently leads this industry due to government incentives supporting electric vehicle usage and solar photovoltaic installations.
Efficiency
Silicon carbide power devices have emerged as the new gold standard of high-performance power electronics. Used extensively across many applications, including DC/DC conversion sections in energy harvesters and EV traction inverters, these devices boast more efficiency, higher power density and lower energy losses compared to their silicon semiconductor counterparts – making them an excellent choice for applications requiring high voltage levels such as wind or solar generators and data centers.
Silicon Carbide (SiC) is a wide bandgap semiconductor material, produced either as powder or crystal form. Naturally found as moissanite gemstone, Silicon Carbide can also be mass produced as a hard chemical compound for use as an abrasive and ceramic plates in bulletproof vests; also used as a lubricant and in carborundum printmaking – an ancient art using granular surfaces – etc.
Manufacturers of power converters were once forced to choose between gate complexity and performance when designing their devices, but thanks to silicon carbide MOSFETs they can now develop high-performing devices without compromising gate complexity – leading them to design power modules up to one third smaller with 50% lower inductance losses and voltage losses than their silicon counterparts. They can even switch at up to 72KHz, saving both cost and space in drive circuits.
Safety
Silicon carbide (also referred to as carborundum) is a wide bandgap semiconductor first commercially produced as powder and crystal in 1893 for use as an abrasive. Today it’s also widely used to make hard and tough ceramics used in car brakes and clutches, bulletproof vest plates, as well as providing thermal conductivity necessary for making mirrors in telescopes such as Herschel and Gaia space telescopes.
Silicon carbide IGBTs have the capacity to sustain higher fault currents than standard IGBTs and MOSFETs due to their extremely high UVLO, which allows it to continue functioning normally under abnormal circuit conditions that would normally result in overheating or catastrophic failure of other devices.
Applications
Silicon carbide is an exceptionally versatile wide-bandgap semiconductor material with many uses across a range of electronic devices. From power semiconductors and converters, to lasers, its versatility extends across many electronic applications. Thanks to its high critical breakdown strength and operating temperature capabilities, silicon carbide makes an excellent material choice for applications requiring very high power densities. Furthermore, its excellent mechanical properties enable fabrication into large disks suitable for astronomical telescope mirrors.
Silicon carbide IGBTs can increase efficiency by decreasing switching losses. They’re also designed to operate under higher temperatures than their silicon counterparts, making them suitable for electric vehicles and other high-voltage applications. Furthermore, silicon carbide igbts can withstand greater levels of transients compared to traditional IGBTs, providing greater resilience against short circuit damages.
In this study, SiC-IGBTs and traditional IGBTs were compared in two inverters based on modular half bridges operating at 800 V DC link voltage. The results demonstrated that SiC-IGBTs outshone traditional IGBTs in both three-phase and single-phase experimental systems; their switching times (voltage rise time and current fall time), overshoot current measurements were conducted using a handheld multifunctional oscilloscope from MICsig as well as Hantek UT201 clamp meters.
SiC-IGBT was also assessed in terms of its turn-off delay time, an essential parameter to determine duration of turn-off transient. During this experiment, its turn off delay time was significantly lower than IGBT devices.
English 
Swedish