10 kV and 15 kV silicon carbide power MOSFETs for next-generation energy conversion and transmission systems

Advanced high-voltage (10 kV-15 kV) silicon carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs described in this paper have the potential to significantly impact the system performance, size, weight, high-temperature reliability, and cost of next-generation energy conversion and transmission systems. In this paper, we report our recently developed 10 kV/20 A SiC MOSFETs with a chip size of 8.1 × 8.1 mm2 and a specific on-resistance (RON, SP) of 100 MΩ-cm2 at 25 °C. We also developed 15 kV/10 A SiC power MOSFETs with a chip size of 8 × 8 mm2 and a RON, SP of 204 mQ cm2 at 25 °C. To our knowledge, this 15 kV SiC MOSFET is the highest voltage rated unipolar power switch. Compared to the commercial 6.5 kV Silicon (Si) IGBTs, these 10 kV and 15 kV SiC MOSFETs exhibit extremely low switching losses even when they are switched at 2-3× higher voltage. The benefits of using these 10 kV and 15 kV SiC MOSFETs include simplifying from multilevel to two-level topology and removing the need for time-interleaving by improving the switching frequency from a few hundred Hz for Si based systems to ≥ 10 kHz for hard-switched SiC based systems.