Intelligent Power Module Featuring Optimised Active Gate Driver and IGBT Module Integration for Electric Vehicle Application

The Power-train design in the hybrid and electric vehicles (xEV) trends toward high efficiency and power density. Power semiconductor module is the key to improve inverter efficiency and density. This paper presents an intelligent power module (IPM) featuring optimized design and integration of active gate driver and IGBT module. An active gate driver with dIC/dt control is designed to reduce switching losses while keeping IGBT operation within safe operating area (SOA). The module is designed to directly supply the additional emitters to avoid cable connections between driver board and power module terminal. Moreover, dual sided cooling module structure not only improves IGBT thermal performance significantly but also enables EMI shielding between driver board and module In addition, bottom side components can be directly cooled by top heatsink. Benefiting from the optimized design and integration of driver and module, the IPM contributes to a higher power density and performance design of an xEV traction inverter.