High-frequency resonant operation of an integrated medium-voltage SiC MOSFET power module

Industrial processes which use induction and dielectric heating are still relying on resonant converters based on vacuum tubes. New emerging medium-voltage silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductor power devices have a potential to replace vacuum tubes and allow for more efficient and compact converters in the high-frequency range. High-voltage packages have been proposed in the literature that are suitable for the 10 kV SiC metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETS), and its fast voltage switching capabilities in hard-switched applications have been demonstrated. However, no packaging is presented which allows the high-frequency operation of a 10 kV SiC MOSFET die. This study proposes the design of a power module for MHz resonant operation of a 10 kV SiC MOSFET. At high switching frequencies, the gate losses become substantial, thus the gate driver is included inside the power module package to ensure a low inductive and high thermally conductive design as seen from the gate driver. The inductance of the proposed power module layout structure is evaluated using ANSYS Q3D Extractor. The thermal performance of the integrated gate-driver circuitry is experimentally verified. Finally, the resonant operation of a medium-voltage SiC MOSFET power module is demonstrated experimentally at 1 MHz.