Journal
IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS
Volume 9, Issue 4, Pages 3916-3935Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/JESTPE.2020.2995386
Keywords
Design and assessment; medium-voltage (MV); power cell; pumpback test; silicon-carbide (SiC) MOSFET
Categories
Funding
- Office of Naval Research (ONR) [43-6028-19, N00014-16-1-2956]
- Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-e) from the Department of Energy (DOE) [DE-AR0000892]
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The article discusses the development of a systematic power cell design and assessment methodology for high-voltage and high-power SiC MOSFET modules to address challenges faced by MV converters. Through a hierarchical design process and component-level assessment, continuous efficient operation of the power cell was successfully achieved.
While 10-kV silicon-carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are gradually penetrating medium-voltage (MV) applications, intertwined challenges concerning high-voltage insulation, high dv/dt, protections, and thermal management are simultaneously imposed to MV converters. For the modular multilevel converter, a systematical power cell design and assessment methodology (DAM) to tackle the unprecedented challenge synergy is essential and, yet, absent. Thereby, this article aims to develop a DAM based on a high-current 10-kV SiC MOSFET halfbridge module. An overall introduction of the power cell and a hierarchical DAM workflow is first presented, followed by the comprehensive component-level DAM with details on design challenges, solutions, assessment instruments, procedures, and test results. Subsequently, the DAM is expanded to the power cell level by exploring its safe operating area associated with switching frequency, power-processing capability, and temperature limit in various operation modes, which, in turn, validates the component designs and determines if they need iterations. Following the methodology, the power cell design is finalized, capable of continuous operation under 6 kV, 84-A rms, and 10 kHz, exhibiting 99.3% efficiency and transient immunity up to 100 V/ns.
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