Characterization and Performance Evaluation of the State-of-the-Art 3.3 kV 30 A Full-SiC MOSFETs

With their intrinsic superiorities such as high breakdown electric field and high thermal conductivity, the silicon carbide (SiC) mosfets are replacing traditional Si insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBTs) in power electronics applications. However, at higher voltages, SiC mosfets are at early stages of development and are not commercialized yet. This paper presents thorough static and dynamic performance characterization of 3.3 kV and 30 A discrete full-SiC mosfets. The devices under test are noncommercialized samples from Sumitomo Electric Industries, Japan. A complete static characterization is performed on the devices under test from 25 up to 150 °C to reveal their characteristics and their dependency on temperature. Also, for dynamic tests, a double-pulse tester with a high-performance gate driver circuit is designed, and tests are performed at 25, 100, and 150 °C. Key characteristics such as on-resistance and switching losses are compared to those of a Si IGBT with similar voltage and current rating in order to assess advantages of SiC mosfets over existing Si semiconductors. Following static and dynamic characterizations, the performance of the devices is evaluated in a boost converter topology, and the results are compared to that of Si IGBTs. The evaluation results reveal significant superiority for SiC mosfets in terms of efficiency, maximum possible switching frequency, and system power density.