Assessment of 10 kV, 100 A Silicon Carbide mosfet Power Modules

This paper presents a thorough characterization of 10 kV SiC <sc>mosfet</sc> power modules, equipped with third-generation <sc>mosfet</sc> chips and without external free-wheeling diodes, using the inherent SiC <sc>mosfet </sc> body-diode instead. The static performance (e.g., <italic>I</italic><sub>DS</sub>–<italic>V</italic><sub>DS </sub>, <italic>I</italic><sub>DS</sub>–<italic>V</italic><sub>GS</sub>, <italic>C</italic>–<italic>V </italic> characteristics, leakage current, body-diode characteristics) is addressed by measurements at various temperatures. Moreover, the power module is tested in a simple chopper circuit with inductive load to assess the dynamic characteristics up to 7 kV and 120 A. The SiC <sc>mosfet</sc> power module exhibits an on-state resistance of 40 mΩ at room-temperature and leakage current in the range of 100 nA, approximately one order of magnitude lower than that of a 6.5 kV Si-IGBT. The power module shows fast switching characteristics with the turn-on (turn-on loss) and turn-off (turn-off loss) times of 130 ns (89 mJ) and 145 ns (33 mJ), respectively, at 6.0 kV supply voltage and 100 A current. Furthermore, a peak short-circuit current of 900 A and a short-circuit survivability time of 3.5 <italic>μ</italic>s were observed. The extracted characterization results could serve as input for power electronic converter design and may support topology evaluation with realistic system performance predictability, using SiC <sc> mosfet</sc> power modules in the energy transmission and distribution networks.

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