Short Circuit Protection and Condition Monitoring of SiC MOSFETs in Power Converters

Abstract:
The utilization of Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs facilitates the miniaturization of power electronic converters thanks to the reduced size passive components enabled by high switching speed. However, reliability is an essential aspect of consideration for the large-scale adoption of SiC technologies in power electronics. Like Si counterparts, short-circuit (SC) protection and condition monitoring (CM) would be two approaches to deal with challenges in single-event abnormal and long-term operations. Nevertheless, different from Si devices, SiC MOSFETs SC capability is compromised, and proper CM health indicators are yet for investigation. Moreover, it demands robust yet simple solutions for practical converter-level applications, which are still missed.
This project aims to develop an integrated solution for the SC and CM of SiC MOSFETs in three-phase inverters. It starts with benchmarking existing SC protection methods from the robustness perspective to understand the variances in the protection time. Then, a fast and robust SC protection scheme is proposed. After that, a CM solution focusing on the implementation simplicity and sensitivity to noise factors is studied. Finally, integrated implementation of the SC scheme and CM solution is expected. The research outcomes serve as a proof-of-concept for SiC MOSFETs SC and CM solutions in applications such as electric vehicles, photovoltaics, motor drives, and in the long term, wind turbines and HVDC.

Funding:  China Scholarship Council