Silicon carbide MADK board for servo drives from Infineon

3rd September 2020

Alex Lynn

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In power electronics motor drives take up a major share in the market. With its CoolSiC MOSFET Modular Application Design Kit (MADK) boards Infineon Technologies has helped in further shortening time to market in this relevant segment. As part of the MADK platform for motors of up to 7.5kW, the evaluation board EVAL-M5-IMZ120R-SIC is a 3-phase inverter board aiming at servo drive applications.

As a true first, Infineon offers details about schematics (PDF), parts (Excel), layout (Gerber), and design package (Altium) as download package on the company’s website. In this way, the board can also serve as a reference design facilitating the design process.

For servo drive applications, silicon carbide reduces semiconductor power losses by up to 80 percent. Making use of this technology can lead to zero maintenance of drives since fans might not be needed for cooling. Additionally, it allows the integration of motor and drive with less complex cabling making inverter cabinets redundant.

The evaluation board was developed to support customers during their first steps designing applications with the CoolSiC MOSFET 1,200V in discrete packages (IMW120R045M1) and EiceDRIVER 1,200V isolated gate driver (1EDI20H12AH). The assembled discrete has a rated blocking voltage of 1,200V at a typical on-state resistance of 45mΩ, the board supports all CoolSiC MOSFETs in 3pin and 4pin TO247 packages.

The evaluation board integrates a three-phase rectifier EMI filter, current sensors, and protection features as well as thermal management and heatsink. All relevant analog and control signals are easily accessible with test pads. To ensure precise measurements the signals are isolated from the power part.

The board is equipped with a 32-pin interface connector for all control signals, this M5 connector is fitting to the controller board XMC DriveCard 4400 (KIT_XMC4400_DC_V1). In combination, evaluation and control board make the motor run with little effort and within a short period.