SiC Power devices complementing the silicon world - status and outlook

Abstract:
SiC power diodes are seen today as an established component in high end applications targeting to best efficiency or highest power density. The worldwide sales increased continuously, in several applications like server PFC or booster stages in solar inverters they are meanwhile an integral part of new designs. Majority of the products are still discrete 650 V devices, complemented by 1200 V parts in discrete packages, but also a growing part of SiC diodes in power modules. The presentation will sketch the current technological benchmark for diodes and give an outlook in future potentials Transistors are commercially available since 2012, the core area here are 1200 V based switches in various forms like MOSFETs, Bipolar transistors (BJT) or JFETs. Those new devices offer significant system advantages, but they also need more design efforts in order to use the features in a beneficial way. The variety of solutions seems to be confusing in the beginning for a large number of users, discussions about immaturities are frequently observed and thus, more efforts need to be spend in order to increase the attractiveness of SiC switches. Interesting will be the outlook towards very high voltage components based on SiC. Demonstrations are numerous, the potential clearly visible. Future work will show whether the components can bring added value at system level and how the single chip solutions can be positioned vs. series connected devices resp. multilevel topologies.