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The snubber circuit is a cost-effective solution to reduce the severe turn-off overvoltage and oscillation caused by the fast switching characteristics of SiC MOSFET. However, the turn-on switching losses will significantly increase as the snubber decouples the power loop parasitic inductance during the switching process. In this article, the effect of the power loop parasitic inductance on the switch performance of SiC MOSFETs and the quasi-zero voltage switching (QZVS) turn-on condition are studied. On this basis, an SiC MOSFET overvoltage and oscillation suppression circuit (OVSC) with not only the switching losses optimization feature but also the clamping energy feedback characteristic is proposed. The overvoltage and oscillation can be effectively suppressed by clamping capacitors, and those capacitors do not participate in the switching process until the overvoltage occurs, which is of benefit to the switching losses reduction compared with the other normal snubber circuits. Besides, the turn-off overvoltage and oscillation energy stored in the clamping capacitors can be feedback to dc and load side through a passive branch composed of an energy feedback inductor and a diode. The experimental studies and comprehensive comparison studies are carried out to verify the validity of the proposed OVSC. The experimental results show that OVSC has excellent overvoltage and oscillation suppression performance and can significantly reduce the switching losses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current sense resistor (CSR) is widely used due to cost and integration considerations in industrial applications. However, when CSRs are used to sense transient currents caused by power device switching, especially fast-switching silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (mosfets) with high di/dt, even a tiny parasitic inductance in CSRs bring a significant impact on its sensing performance. This article proposes a low-cost well-performance and easy-to-design current sensing circuit that uses the CSRs and an LR compensation network (LRCN) to compensate for the effect of parasitic inductance on transient current sensing. In order to support the parameter selection of the LR network, the effects of parameters such as parasitic capacitance, parasitic inductance, and loads on the performance of the proposed current sensing circuit are analyzed in detail. Meanwhile, a parasitic inductance measurement method that only needs passive probes is proposed to measure and calculate the parasitic inductance of CSRs. This circuit can not only sense the transient current on the printed circuit board level but also observe the transient current on the oscilloscope through a coaxial cable connection. Finally, experimental studies under an inductive load double pulse test setup with SiC mosfets are carried out to verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed transient current sensing circuit. Only a high self-resonant frequency inductor and a surface mounted device resistor are needed to form the LR network to fully compensate the effect of parasitic inductance on CSRs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is found out that using reverse coupled inductors could effectively improve power density and dynamic performance of multiphase interleaved point of load converters. Thus, it is of great significance to conduct a research about design and fabrication of ultrathin coupled inductors for system 3-D integration. The aim of this paper is to explore the structures, modeling, and fabrication of ultrathin coupled inductors based on low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology. Four structures classified by shapes and relative positions of windings are introduced and compared. Simple but effective analytic models are set up to calculate self-inductance, leakage inductance, and coupling coefficient for quick design, and a design guideline is summarized according to the models. We made a 1.3-mm-thick LTCC coupled inductor and two competing coil coupled inductors, and compared their characteristics and performance. They are tested in a 12-V input and 1.2-V/40-A output two-phase interleaved buck converter at three different switching frequencies. Core loss and winding loss of the inductors are quantified by simulation. Compared with conventional coil coupled inductors, the LTCC coupled inductor has higher power density and light load efficiency. Besides, it could also help to improve the transient performance of converters for its higher coupling coefficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) has a more serious voltage overshoot than the silicon insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) due to the fundamental differences of the devices’ parasitic parameters. In this paper, a novel low-inductance packaging structure for a wire-bond-based multichip phase-leg SiC MOSFET module to suppress the voltage overshoot is proposed. This packaging structure is based on the adjacent decoupling concept achieved by several decoupling capacitors to reduce the size of the commutation loop. The improvement in the packaging parasitics has been verified through an Ansys Q3D extractor. Furthermore, the influence of adjacent decoupling capacitors is analyzed in detail by frequency-domain analysis and verified with LTspice simulation analysis. Thereafter, the selection and thermal reliability of adjacent decoupling capacitors are expounded. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed packaging structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Distributed air-gap inductors have the advantage of reducing winding loss in high switching frequency dc/dc converters. However, they also have the disadvantage of uneven distribution of flux density, which inevitably leads to uncompleted utilization of magnetic material. This paper proposes a horizontal-winding multipermeability low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) inductor to increase inductance and improve efficiency without the necessity of increasing inductor volume. For the purpose of simplicity, a two-permeability LTCC inductor is taken as an example for analysis and comparison. Design of such an inductor is demonstrated with the aid of 2-D finite elementary analysis simulation. A two-permeability LTCC inductor together with a single-permeability LTCC inductor is fabricated for measuring and testing. The measured results show the two-permeability inductor has higher inductance than the single-permeability inductor. Both inductors are tested in a 5-V input, 3.3-V output dc/dc converter to test their performances. The testing results show the two-permeability LTCC inductor could further improve the efficiency of high-frequency dc/dc converters compared with the single-permeability LTCC inductor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed air-gap inductors such as iron powder chip inductors and low-temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) inductors have the advantage of low-fringing effect loss. However, the flux density nonuniformly distributes in the magnetic cores, which results in the magnetic material closer to the conductor becoming saturated while the magnetic material further away from the conductor is still not fully utilized. This paper proposes a multipermeability distributed air-gap inductor structure to increase inductance without the necessity of increasing the inductor volume. The best discrete permeability value is investigated. Based on the best discrete permeability value, inductance as well as the inductance density trends is calculated by varying the number of permeability layers under the condition that thickness for each layer is constant. Also, the inductance variations versus the number of permeability layers are also obtained under the condition that the inductor thickness is constant. A three-permeability inductor and a single-permeability inductor are fabricated to evaluate the proposed method. The measured results show that the three-permeability inductor has a much higher inductance than the single-permeability inductor for the entire load range. Both inductors are tested in a 5-V input, 3-V output dc/dc converter to compare their performances. The results show that the three-permeability inductor can further improve the efficiency of high-frequency dc/dc converters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-efficiency high step-up dc–dc converter is proposed for renewable energy harvesting, where the sustainable power sources, such as PV panels and fuel cells, are characterized by low-voltage high-current output. The proposed converter employs the current-fed half-bridge structure to generate a square-wave current source. Then, a multiresonant tank is used to provide high voltage gain, absorb the parasitic parameters of the transformer, and create zero-current switching (ZCS) condition for all primary switches. By applying a single capacitor instead of LC for the output filter, the maximum voltage of the resonant capacitor is clamped to the output voltage, which reduces the circulating energy within the circuit and offers ZCS to the rectifying diodes. The operation principle is introduced and the steady-state analysis is also carried out for the derivation of the dc voltage gain and the ZCS conditions of the primary switches. The performance of the proposed converter was verified by a 150-W prototype. A peak efficiency of 95.2% was achieved by running the prototype at 255 kHz with 23-V input and 350-V output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]