Conduction Performance Evaluation of Silicon and SiC Power Semiconductors for Solid-State DC Breakers

Conduction Performance Evaluation of Silicon and SiC Power Semiconductors for Solid-State DC Breakers

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The main luau thank you cards obstacle for the further development and commercialization of solid-state DC circuit breakers is the high ON-state power losses caused by the active power semiconductor devices.This paper presents an experimental evaluation of the electrical ON-state performance among several commercial high-power semiconductor device technologies rated at $1200V$ and $1700V$ at elevated temperatures.In addition, the potential of reducing ON-state losses by applying the maximum gate voltage, namely overdriving, has been assessed.

It is shown that under nominal gate voltages, the normally-ON silicon carbide junction-field-effect transistor exhibits the lowest ON-state losses for both voltage classes, as well as at both temperatures.By using the overdriving concept, the ON-state voltage of silicon insulated-gate bipolar transistors has been minimized up to 10%.In addition to that, both the silicon carbide metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors and normally-ON junction-field-effect transistors experience voltage reduction up to 16% and 33% click here respectively when overdriving, at elevated junction temperatures.