Silicon Carbide (SiC) 10KW Interleaved Boost Converter Achieves 99.1% Peak Efficiency

Focus:

This article discusses a reference design for a 10-kW two-phase, interleaved boost converter based on Cree’s 1200-V, 20-A SiC MOSFETs and Schottky diodes and TI’s UCC28220 interleaved PWM controller. After briefly discussing the benefits of SiC MOSFETs over silicon IGBTs, the reference design is introduced, noting that it can be applied in multiple nonisolated boost applications such as solar inverters, EV chargers, UPSs and high-power dc-dc converters . A block diagram and some details of design are given, though the reader is referred to the Cree website for more details. But there is further discussion on inductor design addressing issues such as frequency selection, EMI, and efficiency, and tradeoffs among these parameters. Benefits of flat coil wire, tips on layout and selection of gate resistor value for reduced EMI are discussed. Then, experimental results are presented including a photo of the reference design demo board, efficiency curves, and thermal measurements with results supporting the claim of increased efficiency and reduced size versus a converter built using silicon IGBTs.

What you’ll learn:

• How to design a nonisolated 10-kW interleaved boost converter using SiC MOSFETs and Schottky diodes
• How to understand the benefits of SiC MOSFETs versus silicon IGBTs in high-power boost converter designs

Notes:

This article also appears in PDF form at http://www.bodospower.com/restricted/downloads/bp_2012_12.pdf, but requires scrolling down to pages 38-40.

View the Source

Author & Publication:

Jimmy Liu, and Kin Lap Wong, Cree, Inc., Bodo's Power Systems, Dec 04 2012

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