Instability Issue of Paralleled Dies in an SiC Power Module in Solid-State Circuit Breaker Applications

Paralleled dies in a power module could have instability issues during high current switching transients. The instability is caused by the differential-mode oscillation among paralleled MOSFETs. Conventional analyses of paralleled MOSFETs' stability are normally limited to a single operating point, which ignores the influences of the switching trajectory and nonlinear device parameters on stability. This article reveals that the switching trajectory can significantly influence parallel stability. The analysis is improved by solving eigenvalues of state-space modeling system matrices of all operating points that the switching trajectory goes through considering nonlinear device parameters. Higher voltage and current stresses result in greater real parts of complex eigenvalues, which explains why the paralleled MOSFETs are more unstable with higher voltage and current stresses. To improve stability in solid-state circuit breaker applications, we propose a method to manipulate the switching trajectory to avoid the unstable region where the conventional hard switching trajectory normally goes through. Experimental results show that the turn-off current capability can be increased from similar to five times of rated current with the gate oscillation using the conventional turn-off trajectory to similar to ten times of rated current without the gate oscillation using the optimal turn-off trajectory.

Automated summary

The study reveals that switching trajectory significantly influences the parallel stability of MOSFETs, and nonlinear device parameters also have an impact on stability. To improve stability in solid-state circuit breaker applications, a method to manipulate the switching trajectory to avoid unstable regions is proposed.