Is SiC a Game Changer?

Over the last two decades there has been much exhilaration about the anticipated transformation of power electronics that SiC devices would bring, which has been accompanied by tremendous efforts by governments and companies... [ view full abstract ]

Over the last two decades there has been much exhilaration about the anticipated transformation of power electronics that SiC devices would bring, which has been accompanied by tremendous efforts by governments and companies around the developed world to meet those expectations. The successful commercial use of SiC Schottky diodes over the last ten years has helped improving efficiency and reducing size of power converters in several applications, but only in the last couple years several SiC active switching devices became commercially available at reasonable cost and volume. Center for Power Electronics Systems at Virginia Tech in United States (CPES) has been involved all-along in characterizing the newest SiC devices and evaluating their potential to change existing applications and open completely new ones.

This tutorial will review the state-of-the-art and summarize CPES experiences in evaluating the use of SiC devices in dc-dc, ac-dc (single- and three-phase) and dc-ac power converters, as well as in three-phase motor drives, for transportation and higher power applications, ranging from kilowatts to megawatts. It will be shown that SiC devices can provide tangible improvements to existing applications so that their adoption will be mostly determined by the converter cost tradeoff. On the other hand, SiC opens two previously unachievable sorts of applications: power converters where power semiconductor devices operate at high-temperatures (> 200 oC), and high-power conversion in megawatt range with switching frequencies in tens of kilohertz. In these new applications, the SiC adoption is mostly governed by system cost tradeoffs and will be fundamentally limited by the availability of other materials, passive devices, sensors, packaging, and system integration technologies that can operate at high-temperature, high-power and high- frequency.