Accurate Power Circuit Loss Estimation Method for Power Converters With Si-IGBT and SiC-Diode Hybrid Pair

Abstract

An accurate power circuit loss estimation method has been developed for designing power converters with hybrid pairs of silicon (Si) insulated-gate bipolar transistor (Si-IGBT) and silicon carbide (SiC) Schottky barrier diode/SiC p-i-n diode. An analytical model of the switching losses of the hybrid pairs is proposed to achieve high accuracy and short calculation time. The nonlinearity of the device parameters and the stray inductance in the circuit are considered in the model. For the accurate power loss calculation, an empirical parameter extraction method is introduced for extracting device parameters. The calculated circuit power losses are compared with measurement results, and good agreements are confirmed. By using the proposed method, the power loss of a power converter utilizing 4.5-kV Si-IGBT/SiC-p-i-n-diode hybrid pairs is estimated to investigate the upper limitation of the switching frequency.