SiC Power Devices, Practical Implementation and Application

Abstract: This tutorial will focus on practical implementation aspects of SiC power devices. It will start with some fundamental knowledge of SiC MOSFET, then some design guidelines for discrete devices in terms of short circuit, avalanche, body diode, Vth shift, thermal and package long-term reliability consideration will be presented. The second section for the tutorial will cover application aspects of SiC MOSET, gate drive circuit design, PCB layout considerations, and modeling and simulation. The third section will discuss progress of SiC module design. Conventional power package like 62mm and EconoDUAL struggle to take full advantage of SiC based technology offers. A new SiC module with low inductance and better dynamic current sharing will be introduced. In addition, an example three-phase converter with a DC link, bussing, sensors, drivers, and controls will be detailed that takes advantage of the module design.

Ty McNutt received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas in the field of silicon carbide semiconductor device physics. Dr. Ty McNutt currently serves as Director of Business Development for the Fayetteville, Arkansas location of Wolfspeed, a Cree Company. He manages various technical projects, and works closely with customers and their applications teams to integrate advanced wide bandgap device and packaging technologies into next generation systems. He is an inventor on seven issued patents on silicon carbide materials, devices, packaging, and applications, as well as authored or co-authored over 70 publications on wide bandgap devices. Dr. McNutt has been working in the field of silicon carbide for 19 years.

Edgar Ayerbe received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1995. In 2011, Edgar joined Cree, Inc. as a product engineer focused on technical support for Cree’s SiC Schottky diode portfolio. In 2013 Edgar expanded his role to lead the market adoption of Wolfspeed SiC MOSFET efforts. Currently he is the product manager for SiC discrete MOSFET.

Jianwen Shao received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, US in 2000 and Tsinghua University, China in 1995, also Bachelor degree from Tsinghua University in 1992. He had been working in Power Electronics applications for Sensorless BLDC control, Electronics Ballasts/ LED drivers, SMPS. He has many years’ experience as applications engineer in power semiconductor industry. Jianwen has been leading Wolfspeed’s applications group for SiC power devices applications since 2017. He is the inventor or co-inventor of 10 issued patents on power electronic circuits, and published over 20 papers in peer reviewed power electronic conferences or IEEE transaction journals.