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Double-sided cooled (DSC) power module structures enable high power density for motor drive inverters ideal for electric vehicles (EVs). This work presents a DSC power module using fast-switching 1200 V silicon carbide mosfet devices in a half-bridge topology, with heterogeneous integration of gate control circuitry and condition monitoring. This article describes the module's novel design and a top-down approach to it driven by a prototype inverter for EVs. Highlighted are the specific implementations of the module's key enabling technologies: 1) vertical device-top interconnects in the form of truncated rectangular pyramidal blocks made of copper, enabling maximum heat dissipation; 2) a low-temperature cofired ceramic interposer for high mechanical strength and improved electrical isolation; 3) built-in gate driver boards; 4) embedded temperature sensors. This article also details the module's unique fabrication process, highlighting its good yield and ease of fabrication. Finally, the prototype module is validated using double-pulse tests in a clamped inductive load at full load current and 800-V dc-link voltage.

This article presents a practical architecture for fully exploiting the scalability of modular multilevel converters (MMC) by clustering the submodules (SMs) and interleaving these clusters. The proposed architecture enables scalability and flexibility for various high-voltage applications by dividing the computing tasks of an arm controller among each cluster control iteration, interleaving the output voltages of each cluster to maintain the desired voltage quality without structural changes, and balancing the cluster energy to ensure stable control performance. One noteworthy aspect of the proposed architecture is its implementation of distributed cluster control using a single controller, which eliminates the need for inter-controller synchronization and utilizes hardware resources cost-effectively. The article provides design guidelines for clustering the SMs through theoretical analysis and numerical examples. The validity and performance of the proposed interleaving scheme for the clusters of SMs are demonstrated through hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS).

In this article, a novel method to detect spoofed sensor data (SSD) for grid-connected inverters is proposed. First, a Kalman filter is used to estimate the inverter status in the proposed method. Then, the impact of SSD on the residual between estimation and control reference is analyzed. By leveraging the standard error of residual, an adaptive cumulative sum (CUSUM) chart is developed to achieve fast SSD detection and improve robustness. In addition, the proposed SSD detection method is verified by the hardware experiment. A comparative experiment with a conventional method also demonstrates the rapidity and robustness of the proposed method. Finally, the performance of the proposed method under different noise covariance matrices is analyzed. Comprehensive analysis shows that the proposed method meets the detection requirement in IEEE 1547 Standard.

SiC mosfets offer significant benefits for power electronics applications due to their material properties, including increased switching speeds, reduced switching losses, and improved power density. However, these benefits can also result in severe switching oscillation and electromagnetic interference in SiC mosfets, which can cause device breakdown or damage. In this article, an oscillation suppression method with clamping function and quantitative design is presented, which not only effectively clamps the drain-source voltage overshoot but also does not reduce the switching speed and increase the switching loss. First, the clamping circuit based on a double-pulse circuit is proposed and its operating principle is described. Then, in order to achieve full suppression of oscillation below the clamping capacitor voltage, the high-frequency equivalent circuit in the oscillation stage is derived and the snubber parameters are further quantitatively designed. Finally, an experimental platform is developed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method can effectively clamp the overshoot and suppress the switching oscillations, which will significantly improve the device application reliability.