Cree to deliver five presentations at ECCE 2015

On 21^st September, Dr. John Palmour, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Power and RF business unit, Cree, will present SiC Power Devices: Changing the Dynamics of Power Circuits from 1 to 30kV during the plenary session spanning.

In this talk, Palmour will provide attendees with an overview of SiC semiconductors across a wide voltage range, discuss the advantages they provide over silicon technologies and refute the industry’s common cost rebuttal by recontextualising the price vs. performance data for SiC and silicon in a system-to-system rather than a component-to-component comparison. Palmour will also briefly discuss a few of the high voltage devices (up to 27kV) that Cree is currently developing.

“The most common knock against silicon carbide is that it’s more expensive than silicon, which it is,” said Palmour. “However, a component-to-component comparison will never be wholly accurate because silicon carbide is vastly superior to silicon with regard to performance. SiC devices make systems less expensive through their ability to operate at much higher frequencies, shrink magnetics, and simplify designs.

"They can also dramatically cut conduction and thermal management costs in lower frequency applications. Further, SiC devices can even allow designers to switch from multi-level topologies down to less complex two-level designs. So, as an industry, we’ve got to switch the focus of this conversation from the cost of the devices to the cost vs. performance metrics of the entire system.”