The electric power system is undergoing a paradigm change on how electric energy is generated, transmitted, and delivered. Power electronics systems which can provide medium-voltage (MV) to high-voltage (HV) output (>13.8 kV ac, > 20 kV dc) with much faster dynamic response (> 10 kHz bandwidth) or high switching-frequency will enable new electronic energy network architectures, like MVDC power delivery, underground solid-state power substation (SSPS), and high-density power electronics building block (PEBB); help drive the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of renewable energy on par with conventional power generation; deliver precise and clean power to loads like high-speed electric motors; push the future power system toward 100% renewable energy and energy storage supplied. In the MV to HV area, the power conversion solution is dominated by silicon devices, like SCR, IGCT, and IGBT, which are slow in nature, posing significant switching losses and bulky auxiliary components like turn-on snubbers. Devices in series are required to reach higher voltage. High-frequency HV converter in two-level or three-level bridges running 20 kHz or higher in many emerging applications, like MVDC networks with high-frequency transformers and energy storage integration is hard to be built by silicon solutions. The emerging HV wide-bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors, e.g., 10 kV SiC MOSFETs offer higher blocking capability, faster and more efficient switching performances. This makes the high-frequency power conversion technology feasible for the MV area. To build a MV high-frequency power converter with high-power density, 10 kV SiC MOSFETs in series are required to reach >10 kV operation dc voltage as the single device rating is still limited by the semiconductor process and packaging capability. However, the knowledge of dynamic voltage sharing of high-speed HV SiC devices under high dv/dt rate and effective balancing methods are not fully explored. Both the voltage imbalance and the robust device voltage balancing control are not studied clearly in the existing literature. This dissertation evaluates the voltage imbalance of series-connected 10 kV SiC MOSFETs thoroughly. The parasitic capacitors connected with device terminals are found to be a unique factor for the voltage imbalance of series-connected SiC MOSFETs, which have a significant impact on the dv/dt of different devices based on the detailed analysis. The unbalanced dv/dt and the gate signal mismatch together result in the voltage imbalance of series-connected SiC MOSFETs and a set of new voltage balancing control methods are proposed. Passive capacitor compensation and closed-loop short pulse gate signal control are proposed to solve the voltage imbalance caused by the unbalanced dv/dt. Closed-loop gate delay time control is proposed to solve the voltage imbalance caused by the gate signal mismatch. Two gate driver prototypes are designed and verified for the proposed voltage balancing control methods. As the number of devices increases, the voltage balancing methods under the device-level will be complex and risky to coordinate. Therefore, the converter-level device voltage balancing methods are desired when over three devices are in stack. Therefore, this dissertation proposes to use the 3-level (3L) neutral-point-clamped (NPC) converter structure as a converter-level approach to simplify the voltage balancing control of series-connected SiC MOSFETs. A new modulation strategy is proposed to control the loss of clamping diodes, so compact MV SiC Schottky diodes can be selected to reduce the impact of extra components on the power density. Compared to the phase-leg with direct series-connected SiC MOSFETs, the phase-leg designed with the converter-level approach achieves similar power density, easier voltage balancing control, and better efficiency, which is attractive for both two and four devices in series connection. Finally, this dissertation studies the impact of series-connected 10 kV SiC MOSFETs on MV phase-leg volume reduction with the example of multi-level flying capacitor (FC) converters. The relation between the capacitances of FCs and the device voltage is studied and a new design procedure for FCs is developed to achieve minimum FC energy and regulate the maximum device voltage. With the design procedure, the total FC volumes of a 22 kV 5-level FC converter and a 22 kV 3-level FC converter with series-connected 10 kV SiC MOSFETs are calculated and compared. Series-connected 10 kV SiC MOSFETs are found to help significantly reduce the total FC volume (> 85 %). In summary, this dissertation demonstrates that the direct series connection of 10 kV SiC MOSFETs is a reliable solution for the MV converter design, and the converter-level approach is a better voltage balancing control method. This dissertation also presents a quantitative analysis of the volume reduction enabled by the series-connected 10 kV SiC MOSFETs in MV converter phase-leg design. / Doctor of Philosophy / Emerging industrial applications require medium voltage (MV) power converters. For existing MV converter solutions with Si IGBT, complex system structures are usually required, which affects the efficiency, power density, and cost of the system. For the design of MV converter, the recent 10 kV SiC MOSFET has the promising potential to improve efficiency and power density by adopting a simpler topology and fewer conversion stages. New design challenges also emerge with the new 10 kV SiC MOSFETs and one of them is the device voltage control during the operation. This dissertation mainly focuses on the voltage balancing control of series-connected 10 SiC MOSFETs, which is an attractive solution to build the MV converter phase-leg in a simple structure. Several voltage balance control methods are proposed and compared in this dissertation, which helps justify that the series-connected SiC MOSFET is a reliable approach for the MV converter design. In addition, this dissertation also analyzes the volume reduction enabled by the series-connected SiC MOSFETs with the example of a multi-level flying capacitor converter in dc-ac applications.

Due to the superior characteristics compared to its silicon (Si) counterpart, the wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor enables next-generation power electronics systems with higher efficiency and higher power density. With higher blocking voltage available, WBG devices, especially the silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), have been widely explored in various medium-voltage (MV) applications in both industry and academia. However, due to the high di/dt and high dv/dt during the switching transient, potential overcurrent, overvoltage, and gate failure can greatly reduce the reliability of implementing SiC MOSFETs in an MV system. By utilizing the parasitic inductance between the Kelvin- and the power-source terminal, a short-circuit (SC) and overload (OL) dual-protection scheme is proposed for overcurrent protection. A full design procedure and reliability analysis are given for SC circuit design. A novel OL circuit is proposed to protect OL faults at the gate-driver level. The protection procedure can detect an SC fault within 50 nanoseconds and protect the device within 1.1 microsecond. The proposed method is a simple and effective solution for the potential overcurrent problem of the SiC MOSFET. For SiC MOSFETs in series-connection, the unbalanced voltages can result in system failure due to device breakdown or unbalanced thermal stresses. By injecting current during the turn-off transient, an active dv/dt control method is used for voltage balancing. A 6 kV phase-leg using eight 1.7 kV SiC MOSFETs in series-connection has been tested with voltage balanced accurately. Modeling of the stacked SiC MOSFET with active dv/dt control is also done to summarize the design methodology for an effective and stable system. This method provides a low-loss and compact solution for overvoltage problems when MV SiC MOSFETs are connected in series. Furthermore, a scalable auxiliary power network is proposed to prevent gate failure caused by unstable gate voltage or EMI interference. The two-stage auxiliary power network (APN) architecture includes a wireless power transfer (WPT) converter supplied by a grounded low voltage dc bus, a high step-down-ratio (HSD) converter powered from dc-link capacitors, and a battery-based mini-UPS backup power supply. The auxiliary-power-only pre-charge and discharge circuits are also designed for a 6 kV power electronics building block (PEBB). The proposed architecture provides a general solution of a scalable and reliable auxiliary power network for the SiC-MOSFET-based MV converter. For the WPT converter, a multi-objective optimization on efficiency, EMI mitigation, and high voltage insulation capability have been proposed. Specifically, a series-series-CL topology is proposed for the WPT converter. With the optimization and new topology, a 120 W, 48 V to 48 V WPT converter has been tested to be a reliable part of the auxiliary power network. For the HSD converter, a novel unidirectional voltage-balancing circuit is proposed and connected in an interleaved manner, which provides a fully modular and scalable solution. A ``linear regulator + buck" solution is proposed to be an integrated on-board auxiliary power supply. A 6 kV to 45 V, 100 W converter prototype is built and tested to be another critical part of the auxiliary power network. / Doctor of Philosophy / The wide bandgap semiconductor enables next-generation power electronics systems with higher efficiency and higher power density which will reduce the space, weight, and cost for power supply and conversion systems, especially for renewable energy. However, by pushing the system voltage level higher to medium-voltage of tens of kilovolts, although the system has higher efficiency and simpler control, the reliability drops. This dissertation, therefore, focusing on solving the possible overcurrent, overvoltage, and gate failure issues of the power electronics system that is caused by the high voltage and high electromagnetic interference environment. By utilizing the inductance of the device, a dual-protection method is proposed to prevent the overcurrent problem. The overcurrent fault can be detected within tens of nanoseconds so that the device will not be destroyed because of the huge fault current. When multiple devices are connected in series to hold higher voltage, the voltage sharing between different devices becomes another issue. The proposed modeling and control method for series-connected devices can balance the shared voltage, and make the control system stable so that no overvoltage problem will happen due to the non-evenly distributed voltages. Besides the possible overcurrent and overvoltage problems, losing control of the devices due to the unreliable auxiliary power supply is another issue. This dissertation proposed a scalable auxiliary power network with high efficiency, high immunity to electromagnetic interference, and high reliability. In this network, a wireless power transfer converter is designed to provide enough insulation and isolation capability, while a switched capacitor converter is designed to transfer voltage from several kilovolts to tens of volts. With the proposed overcurrent protection method, voltage sharing control, and reliable auxiliary power network, systems utilizing medium-voltage wide-bandgap semiconductor will have higher reliability to be implemented for different applications.

To support the study of potential utilization of the emerging silicon carbide (SiC) devices, two SiC active switches, namely 1.2 kV, 5 A SiC JFET manufactured by SiCED, and 1.2 kV, 20 A SiC MOSFET by CREE, have been investigated systematically in this thesis. The static and switching characteristics of the two switches have firstly been characterized to get the basic device information. Specific issues in the respective characterization process have been explored and discussed. Many of the characterization procedures presented are generic, so that they can be applied to the study of any future SiC unipolar active switches. Based on the characterization data, different modeling procedures have also been introduced for the two SiC devices. Considerations and measures about model improvement have been investigated and discussed, such as predicting the MOSFET transfer characteristics under high drain-source bias from switching waveforms. Both models have been verified by comparing simulation waveforms with the experimental results. imitations of each model have been explained as well. In order to capture the parasitic ringing in the very fast switching transients, a modeling methodology has also been proposed considering the circuit parasitics, with which a device-package combined simulation can be conducted to reproduce the detailed switching waveforms during the commutation process. This simulation, however, is inadequate to provide deep insights into the physics behind the ringing. Therefore a parametric study has also been conducted about the influence of parasitic impedances on the device's high-speed switching behavior. The main contributors to the parasitic oscillations have been identified to be the switching loop inductance and the device output junction capacitances. The effects of different parasitic components on the device stresses, switching energies, as well as electromagnetic interference (EMI) have all been thoroughly analyzed, whose results exhibit that the parasitic ringing fundamentally does not increase the switching loss but worsens the device stresses and EMI radiation. Based on the parametric study results, this thesis finally compares the difference of SiC JFET and MOSFET in their respective switching behavior, comes up with the concept of device switching speed limit under circuit parasitics, and establishes a general design guideline for high-speed switching circuits on device selection and layout optimization. / Master of Science

Nowadays high power density has become an emerging need for the medium-voltage (MV) high-power converters in applications of power distribution systems in urban areas and transportation carriers like ship, airplane, and so forth. The limited footprint or space resource cost such immensely high price that introducing expensive advanced equipment to save space becomes a cost-effective option. To this end, replacing conventional Si IGBT with the superior SiC MOSFET to elevate the power density of MV modular converters has been defined as the concentration of this research work. As the modular multilevel converter (MMC) is the most typical modular converter for high power applications, the research topic is narrowed down to study the SiC MOSFET-based MMC. Fundamentals of the MMC is firstly investigated by introducing a proposed state-space switching model, followed by unveiling all possible operation scenarios of the MMC. The lower-frequency energy fluctuation on passive components of the MMC is interpreted and prior-art approaches to overcome it are presented. By scrutinizing the converter's switching states, a new switching-cycle control (SCC) approach is proposed to balance the capacitor energy within one switching cycle is explored. An open-loop model-predictive method is leveraged to study the behavior of the SCC, and then a hybrid-current-mode (HCM) approach to realize the closed-loop SCC on hardware is proposed and verified in simulation. In order to achieve the hybrid-current-mode SCC (HCM-SCC), a high-performance Rogowski switch-current sensor (RSCS) is proposed and developed. As sensing the switching current is a critical necessity for HCM-SCC, the RSCS is designed to meet all the requirement for the control purposes. A PCB-embedded shielding design is proposed to improve the sensor accuracy under high dv/dt noises caused by the rapid switching transients of SiC MOSFET. The overall system and control validations have been conducted on a high-power MMC prototype. The basic unit of the MMC prototype is a SiC Power Electronics Building Block (PEBB) rated at 1 kV DC bus voltage. Owing to the proposed SCC, the PEBB development has achieved high power density with considerable reduction of passive component size. Finally, experimental results exhibit the excellent performance of the RSCS and the HCM-SCC. / Ph. D.

Numerous power electronics building blocks (PEBB) based power conversion systems have been developed to explore modular design, scalable voltage and current ratings, low-cost operations, etc. This paper further extends the modular concept from the power stage to the control system. The communication network in SiC-based modular power converters is becoming significant for distributed control architecture, with the requirements of tight synchronization and low latency. The influence of the synchronization accuracy on harmonics under the phase-shifted carrier pulse width modulation (PSC-PWM) is evaluated. When the synchronization is accurate, the influence of an increase in harmonics can be ignored. Thus, a synchronous distributed control and communication protocol with well-performed synchronization of 25 ns accuracy is proposed and verified for a 120 kHz SiC-based impedance measurement unit (IMU) with cascaded H-bridge PEBBs. An improved synchronization method with additional analog circuits is further implemented and verified with sub-ns synchronization accuracy. / The power electronics building block (PEBB) concept is proposed for medium-voltage converter applications in order to realize the modular design of the power stage. Traditionally, the central control architecture is popular in converter systems. The voltage and current are sensed and then processed in one central controller. The control hardware interfaces and software have to be customized for a specified number of power cells, and the scalability of controller is lost. In stead, in the distributed control architecture, a local controller in each PEBB can communicate with the sensors, gate drivers, etc. A high-level controller collects the information from each PEBB and conducts the control algorithm. In this way, the design can be more modular, and the local controller can share the computation burden with the high-level controller, which is good for scalability. In such distributed control architecture, a synchronous communication system is required to transmit data and command between the high-level controller and local controllers. A power converter always requires a highly synchronized operation to turn on or turn off the devices. In this work, a synchronous communication protocol is proposed and experimentally validated on a SiC-based modular power converter.

Nowadays, major public concern is concentrated on reducing the usage of fossil fuels and reducing emissions of CO₂ by different energy advancement. Electric vehicle technology presents extremely effective way of reducing carbon emissions and paves the way of having sustainable and renewable energy future. In order to wear the cost of electric vehicles down, batteries have to be improved as well as higher power density and high reliability has to be achieved. This research work mainly focuses on achieving higher power density and higher reliability of the inverter stage by utilizing wide-bandgap SiC MOSFET semiconductor devices in electric vehicle application. In order to achieve higher reliability of the inverter stage, high bandwidth, high performance Rogowski coil switch current sensors are employed. These sensor were embedded on the PCB and integrated on the gate driver. High bandwidth switch current sensor measurement is used for fast short-circuit detection and protection of the SiC MOSFET semiconductor switches. Furthermore, comparison with conventional detection and protection method used in automotive IGBT applications is shown where novel protection showed superior performance. This thesis also shows principle of how to obtain phase currents of the system using Rogowski coil switch current sensor measurements. Digital reconstruction principle is employed to obtain the phase currents. Accurate and linear current sensor is achieved. By successfully realizing this integrated phase current measurement on the gate driver, elimination of the commercial current sensors from the system is possible. By eliminating existing phase current sensors, higher power density could be achieved. Sensor is evaluated in both continuous and discontinuous PWM schemes. / Master of Science / Together with renewable sources, electric vehicle will play an important role as a part of sustainable and renewable energy future by significantly reducing emissions of CO₂ into the atmosphere. In order to make electric cars more acceptable and accessible and make a significant impact on the environment, cost must be lowered down. To wear the cost of the electric vehicles down, powertrain of the car must be significantly improved and made smaller as well as lighter. This thesis mainly focuses on improving the reliability of the motor driving stage by implementing novel protection during fault periods such as short-circuit event. Furthermore, this novel protection allows current sensing that is crucial for motor control during normal operation periods. This will enable more compact motor driving stage since existing current sensing elements can be eliminated.

Cette thèse présente l'étude et la réalisation d'un disjoncteur statique tout silicium et intelligent pouvant fonctionner à haute température (200°C) pour des applications de type DC basse et moyenne tensions. Plusieurs applications dans l’aéronautique, l’automobile et les transports ferroviaires poussent les composants à semi-conducteur de puissance à être utilisés à haute température. Cependant, les Si-IGBT et Si-CoolMOSTM actuellement commercialisés ont une température de jonction spécifiée et estimée à 150°C et quelque fois à 175°C. L’une des faiblesses des convertisseurs provient de la réduction du rendement avec l’augmentation de la température de jonction des composants à semiconducteur de puissance qui peut amener à leur destruction. La solution serait d’utiliser des composants grand-gap (SiC, GaN), qui autorisent un fonctionnement à une température de jonction plus élevée ;mais ces technologies en plein essor ont un coût relativement élevé. Une solution alternative serait de faire fonctionner des composants en silicium à une température de jonction voisine de 200°C afin de conserver l’un des principaux intérêts du silicium en termes de coût. Avant de commencer, le premier chapitre portera sur un état de l’art des différentes techniques de protection aussi bien mécanique que statique afin d’identifier les éléments essentiels pour la réalisation du circuit de protection. Les disjoncteurs hybrides seront aussi abordés afin de voir comment ceux-ci arrivent à combler les lacunes des disjoncteurs mécaniques et purement électroniques (statiques). A partir du chapitre précédent, un disjoncteur statique intelligent de faible puissance sera réalisé afin de mieux cerner les différentes difficultés qui sont liées à ce type de disjoncteur. Le disjoncteur statique sera réalisé à partir de fonction analogique de telle façon à ce qui soit autonome et bas cout. Il en ressort que les inductances parasites ainsi que la température des composants à base de semi-conducteurs ont un impact significatif lors de la coupure.Le chapitre III portera sur une analyse non exhaustive, vis-à-vis de la température, de différents types d’interrupteurs contrôlés à base de semi-conducteur de puissance en s’appuyant sur plusieurs caractérisations électriques (test de conduction, tension de seuil, etc) afin de sélectionner le type d’interrupteur de puissance qui sera utilisé pour le chapitre IV. Comme il sera démontré, les composants silicium à super jonction peuvent se rapprocher du comportement des composants à base de carbure de silicium pour les basses puissances. Un disjoncteur statique 400V/63A (courant de court-circuit prédictible de 5kA) sera étudié et 4développé afin de mettre en pratique ce qui a été précédemment acquis et pour montrer la compétitivité du silicium pour cette gamme de puissance. / This thesis presents a study about a smart solid state circuit breaker which can work at 200°C forlow and medium voltage continuous applications. Some applications in aeronautics, automotive,railways, petroleum extraction push power semiconductor devices to operate at high junctiontemperature. However, current commercially available Si-IGBT and Si-CoolMOS have basically amaximum junction temperature specified and rated at 150°C and even 175°C. Indeed, the main problemin conventional DC-DC converters is the switching losses of power semiconductor devices (linked to thetemperature influence on carrier lifetime, on-state voltage, on-resistance and leakage current) whichdrastically increase with the temperature rise and may drive to the device failure. Then, the use of wideband gap semiconductor like SiC or GaN devices allows higher junction temperature operation (intheory about 500°C) and higher integration (smaller heatsink, higher switching frequency, smallconverter), but are still under development and are expensive technologies. In order to keep theadvantage of low cost silicon devices, a solution is to investigate the feasibility to operate such devicesat junction temperature up to 200°C.Before starting the first starting chapter is a stat of the art of protectives circuit technics as well asmechanics as statics in order to identify essentials elements to develop the protective circuit. Hybridprotective circuits are approached too.From the precedent chapter, a smart and low power solid state circuit breaker is realized to identifyproblems which are linked with this type of circuit breaker. Solid state circuit breaker is developed withanalog components in a way that is autonomous and low cost. It’s follow that stray inductance andtemperature have an important impact when a default occurs.Chapter III give an analyze on different silicon power semiconductor dice towards temperature5relying on statics and dynamics characteristics in order to find the best silicon power switch which beused in the chapter IV. It has been shown that super junction MOSFET has the same behavior at lowpower than silicon carbide MOSFET.Solid state circuit breaker (400V/63A) has been studied and developed, in order to use all theknowledge previously acquired and to show the competitively of the silicon for this power range.

The master’s thesis deals with design and realization of three-phase inverter for experimental high speed asynchronous motor with a mechanical power of 6 kW. The thesis deals with the design of the individual components of the DC link. The thesis describes the selection of suitable capacitors in the DC link. There is also a complete simulation of the inverter in the Matlab Simulink program. Part of the thesis is also the design and realization of printed circuit boards of this inverter.

Die Bedeutung von Leistungshalbleitern mit großem Bandabstand (Wide Band Gap, WBG) nahm in den letzten drei Jahrzehnten kontinuierlich zu. Diese Bauelemente haben das Potenzial, Silizium (Si) - Bauelemente in bestimmten Anwendungen sowie Leistungs- und Frequenzbereichen zu ersetzen. Siliziumkarbid (SiC)-Leistungshalbleiter sind die gegenwärtig am Weitesten entwickelten WBG-Leistungshalbleiter. Dank besonderer Materialeigenschaften zeichnen sich SiC-Leistungshalbleiter im Vergleich zu Si-Bauelementen durch einen geringeren spezifischen Widerstand, eine höhere Schaltgeschwindigkeit, geringere schaltverluste sowie eine höhere maximale Sperrschichttemperatur aus. Die deutlich erhöhten Herstellungskosten limitieren den Einsatz von SiC-Leistungshalbleitern auf Anwendungen, in denen die Vorteile dieser Bauelemente die höheren Kosten überkompensieren und Systemvorteile ermöglichen. Heute werden SiC-Leistungshalbleiter z.B. in Solarwechselrichtern oder in Elektrofahrzeugen verwendet. Für Stromrichter industrieller elektrischer Antriebe ist die Kosten-Nutzen-Bilanz des Einsatzes von SiC-Leistungshalbleitern gegenwärtig nicht bekannt. Diese Fragestellung motiviert diese Arbeit. Die Auslegung sowie die daraus resultierenden Vor- und Nachteile eines Stromrichters mit SiC-Leistungshalbleitern für elektrische Industrieantriebe ist der Untersuchungsgegenstand dieser Arbeit. Zu diesem Zweck wurde unter Einhaltung industrieller Auslegungskriterien ein 240 kVA SiC-basierter Stromrichterdemonstrator als aktiver Gleichrichter am dreiphasigen 690 V Niederspannungsnetz untersucht. Auf der Basis einer Stromrichterauslegung für SiC- und Si-Leistungshalbleiter wurde ein theoretischer Vergleich von Kosten, Effizienz, Größe und Gewicht durchgeführt. Die Arbeit stellt zunächst den Stand der Technik für SiC-Leistungshalbleiter dar. Anschließend wird ein geeignetes SiC-MOSFET Module für den industriellen Stromrichter ausgewählt und bezüglich des Schaltverhaltens sowie der Parallelschaltung charakterisiert. Der Auslegung des Stromrichterleistungsteils liegen industrielle Anforderungen zu Grunde. Ein realisierter Demonstrator für einen netzseitigen Stromrichter (Active Front End) ist durch eine symmetrische Parallelschaltung von zwei SiC-Modulen, geeignete Ansteuerschaltungen (Gate Drive Units), eine niedrige Streuinduktivität im Kommutierungskreis sowie ein LCL-Filter mit Standard-Kernmaterialien gekennzeichnet. Der Stromrichtervergleich zeigt, dass der betrachtete Stromrichter mit SiC-Leistungshalbleitern im gesamten Betriebsbereich geringere Verluste verursacht als ein vergleichbarer Stromrichter mit Si-Leistungshalbleitern. Der SiC - basierte Stromichter ermöglicht auch eine deutliche Gewichtsreduktion bei ca. 89% der Systemkosten. Somit stellen SiC-Leistungshalbleiter eine attraktive technische Lösung für die untersuchte Anwendung eines aktiven Gleichrichters für industrielle elektrische Antriebe dar. / Wide bandgap (WBG) power semiconductors have drawn steadily increasing interest in power electronics in the last three decades. These devices have shown the potential of replacing silicon as the default semiconductor solution for several applications in determined power and frequency ranges. Among them the most mature WBG semiconductor material is silicon carbide (SiC), which presents several characteristics at the crystal level that translate in the potential of presenting lower resistivity, be able to switch faster with lower switching loss, and present both higher characteristics to tolerate and dissipate heat when com pared with silicon. However, the same characteristics that make it great also present a different set of drawbacks to be considered, which aligned with its increased cost make it challenging to assess if its advantages are justified for a particular application. Applications that highly value efficiency and/or power density are the most benefited, and converter solutions featuring the technology have already breached into these application markets. However in other applica tions, the line from which silicon carbide starts making sense in the cost/benefits/drawbacks balance is not clear. This is typically the case of industrial applications, which were the main focus and motivation of this work. Hence, in this work the main goal has been to determine the basic characteristics, advantages and limitations that SiC technology designs for industrial low voltage high power grid connected converters present. To that end, a 690 V, 240 kVA SiC-based grid-tied converter demonstrator following industrial design criteria has been developed. Then, based on this design procedure a theoretical comparison between a 690 V, 190 kVA SiC-based converter against a silicon-based converter designed for the same power output has been performed to compare them regarding cost, efficiency, size and weight. This work also comprises a thorough revision of the state of art of SiC devices, which led to the selection of the switching device. Additionally, a characterization of both single and parallel-connected operation of the semiconductor modules was performed, to determine the module characteristics and its suitability to build the SiC converter demonstrator. Results show that the converter demonstrator operates as designed, proving that is possible with the corresponding precautions to achieve: a low inductive power loop, balanced parallel connection of SiC modules, adequate driving circuits for the parallel-connected modules and an adequate filtering solution in compliance with grid-codes based on standard core materials for the selected switching frequency. Finally, the theoretical comparison between the two designed power converters shows that, attained to the conditions of the comparison, the SiC converter solution presents efficiency gains over the whole operating range, while presenting substantial weight savings at 89% of the costs of the Si-IGBT design, presenting itself as the cost-effective solution for the presented application requirements under the given design constraints.

<p>Advances in modern technology and recent demand for high power applications have motivated great interest in power electronics. Power semiconductor devices are key components that have enabled significant advances in power electronic systems. Historically, silicon has been the material of choice for power semiconductor devices such as diodes, transistors and thyristors. However, silicon devices are now reaching their fundamental limits, and a transition to wide bandgap semiconductors is critical to make further progress in the field. Among them, SiC (silicon carbide) has attracted increasing attention as a power semiconductor to replace silicon due to its superior properties and technological maturity. In fact, SiC power MOSFETs have been commercially available since 2011, and are actively replacing their silicon counterparts at blocking voltages above 1 kV. At these voltages, the specific on-resistance of SiC MOSFETs is 200-300x lower than that of silicon devices. However, conventional vertical SiC MOSFETs are still far from their theoretical performance at blocking voltages below 2 kV. In this regime, the channel resistance is the dominant limitation due to the relatively low channel mobility at the SiO2/4H-SiC MOS interface.<br></p><p> </p><p>In this thesis, the first successful demonstration of a novel power device in 4H-SiC called the trigate power DMOSFET (double diffused metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor) is presented. This device reduces the channel resistance by a factor of 3-5× compared with the state-of-art commercial power DMOSFETs, without requiring an increase in the channel mobility. The trigate structure is applied to a power MOSFET for the first time along with a self-aligned short channel process. This new structure utilizes both the conventional horizontal surface as well as the sidewalls of a trench to increase the effective width of the channel without increasing the device area. Conceptual design, optimization, process development and electrical results are presented. The trigate power MOSFET with a trench depth of 1 μm designed for a blocking voltage of 650 V has a specific on-resistance of 1.98 mΩcm²and a channel resistance of 0.67 mΩcm².This corresponds to a ∼2× reduction in the total specific on-resistance, and a 3.3× reduction in the specific channel resistance as compared to a conventional DMOSFET with the same blocking voltage rating. This demonstration is a landmark that could help SiC technology compete successfully in the lower blocking voltage regime below 600 V, and access for the first time a completely new segment in the power electronics application space.</p>