AbstractsEngineering

During the last decade, Silicon-Carbide (SiC) power devices have attracted great attention in various industry applications such as hybrid electric vehicles, electric vehicles, and down-hole drilling tools. Due to the precious semiconductor properties of SiC material, such as high band-gap energy, critical electric field, saturation velocity, and thermal conductivity, SiC power devices are promising to be switched at higher voltage, current, speed, and temperature than conventional silicon power devices. One favorable device among the promising SiC power devices is SiC power Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor (MOSFET). This work is dedicated to develop peripheral circuits for high temperature power inverters using SiC power MOSFETs in an economic and practical approach. In the development, particular emphasis is placed on designing high temperature gate drive circuits using mature high temperature discrete components. In past years, other researchers focused on using some advanced high temperature integrated circuit technologies in development of the high temperature gate drive circuits, such as high temperature silicon-on-insulator and SiC integrated circuit technologies. At the time of this work, the advanced high temperature integrated circuit technologies are still every expensive and immature. To overcome the challenge raised by high costs of the advanced high temperature integrated circuit technologies, this work properly selects and utilizes the mature high temperature discrete components for the design of a high temperature gate drive and protection circuit. The development of the high temperature gate drive circuits adopts an economic and practical approach. In the approach, only critical components, such as components for the high temperature gate drive circuits, are high temperature components. This approach is validated theoretically and experimentally in this work. A high temperature and current gate drive circuit and a high temperature gate drive and protection circuit are proposed, fabricated and evaluated for safely switching SiC power MOSFETs over a wide temperature range from -10° to 180°. Furthermore, a 30kVA SiC power inverter using the proposed high temperature gate drive and protection circuit is built and tested over the wide temperature range from -10° to 180°. Along with the high temperature gate drive and protection circuit, the other peripheral circuits of the 30kVA SiC power inverter, such as data acquisition circuits and inverter control circuits, are developed based on a TI TMS320F28335 control card for room temperature operation. Eventually, the SiC inverter successfully reaches full power operation at 30kVA in all test environments and the performance of its peripheral circuits is validated. Advisors/Committee Members: Xu, Longya (Advisor).