Experimental Investigation on SiC MOSFET Turn-Off Power Loss Reduction Using the Current Sink Capacitor Technique

Michał Harasimczuk, Rafał Kopacz (), Przemysław Trochimiuk, Rafał Miśkiewicz and Jacek Rąbkowski
Additional contact information
Michał Harasimczuk: Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Bialystok University of Technology, 15-351 Bialystok, Poland
Rafał Kopacz: Institute of Control and Industrial Electronics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland
Przemysław Trochimiuk: Institute of Control and Industrial Electronics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland
Rafał Miśkiewicz: Institute of Control and Industrial Electronics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland
Jacek Rąbkowski: Institute of Control and Industrial Electronics, Warsaw University of Technology, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland

Energies, 2023, vol. 17, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: This paper investigates the current sink capacitor technique as a method to minimize the turn-off power losses of SiC MOSFETs operated with zero-voltage switching (ZVS). The method is simple and is based on adding auxiliary capacitors in parallel to the transistors, allowing the sink capacitor to take over part of the channel current, thus limiting the power loss while also advantageously lowering the d v d s / d t ratio. The technique is validated and experimentally studied based on a single-pulse test setup with 1200 V-rated SiC MOSFETs, with several capacitances and gate resistance values, at various switched currents up to roughly 60 A. It is shown that by employing even very small capacitances, in the range of nanofarads, the turn-off power loss can be reduced by over tenfold, with a negligible impact on the volume and complexity of the system. Thus, the presented method can be effectively employed to improve soft-switched power converters.

Keywords: power electronics; power MOSFETs; silicon carbide; switching losses; zero-voltage switching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/1/189/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/1/189/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2023:i:1:p:189-:d:1309853

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().