Design Aspects in SiC MOSFET based High Performance Automotive and Commercial Vehicle Inverters

Inhalt:
Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are currently gaining wide-spread use in traction inverters. This paper focuses on their series application in high-performance passenger car and commercial vehicle inverters at DC link voltages between 800-950 V and maximum RMS phase currents up to 1000 A. Compared to the previously used silicon IGBTs, SiC MOSFETs generally do not bring entirely new design challenges but rather challenge the established designs in order to allow for highly performant, compact, robust, and ultimately cost effective solutions. Topics of commutation cell design for peak performance, thermal design for providing high continuous power, as well as short-circuit detection and clearing and active DC link discharge for functional safety are discussed in this paper.