Design support offered for industry’s lowest loss switches

25th November 2014

Barney Scott

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GeneSiC Semiconductor announces the availability of Gate Driver evaluation board and has expanded its design support for what it calls the the industry’s lowest loss switches, the SiC Junction Transistor (SJT), with a fully-qualified LTSPICE IV model. Using the Gate Driver Board, power conversion circuit designers can verify the benefits of sub-15ns, temperature independent switching characteristics of SiC Junction Transistors, with low driver power losses.

Incorporating SPICE models, circuit designers can easily evaluate the benefits GeneSiC’s SJTs provide, achieving a higher level of efficiency than possible with conventional silicon power switching devices for comparably-rated devices.

SiC Junction Transistors have significantly different characteristics from other SiC Transistor technologies, as well as Silicon Transistors. Gate Driver boards that can provide low power losses while still offering high switching speeds were needed to provide drive solutions for utilising the benefits of SiC Junction Transistors.

GeneSiC’s fully isolated GA03IDDJT30-FR4 Gate driver board takes in 0/12V and a TTL signal to optimally condition the voltage/current waveforms required to provide small rise/fall times, while still minimising the continuous current requirement for keeping the Normally-OFF SJT conducting during the on-state. The pin configuration and form factors are kept similar to other SiC transistors. GeneSiC has also released Gerber files and BOMs to end-user to enable them to incorporate the benefits of the driver design innovations realised.

SJTs offer well-behaved on-state and switching characteristics, making it easy to create behaviour based SPICE models that agree remarkably well with the underlying physics based models as well. Using well-established and understood physics-based models, SPICE parameters were released after extensive testing with device behaviour. GeneSiC’s SPICE models are compared to the experimentally measured data on all device datasheets and are applicable to all 1200 and 1700V SJTs released.

GeneSiC’s SJTs are capable of delivering switching frequencies that are more than 15 times higher than IGBT-based solutions. Their higher switching frequencies can enable smaller magnetic and capacitive elements, thereby shrinking the overall size, weight and cost of power electronics systems. This SJT SPICE model adds to GeneSiC’s comprehensive suite of design support tools, technical documentation, and reliability information to provide power electronics engineers with the design resources necessary to implement GeneSiC’s comprehensive family of SJTs and Rectifiers into next-gen of power systems.