This paper investigates the switching performance of a 1.2 kV half-bridge SiC MOSFET module from Sanrex. Unlike in a standard SiC MOSFET module, where the MOSFET and the anti-parallel diode chips are fabricated separately, in the chosen MOSFET module (FCA150XB120), both the MOSFET and the diode are fabricated on a single chip. The device is characterized under both hard and soft switching conditions. For the hard switching characterization, an inductive clamped buck converter is employed, whereas for the soft switching characterization, a resonant half-bridge converter with LC load is used. A comparison of the hard switching loss is performed with the soft switching loss at the same current. This comparison provides insight into the significance of employing an appropriate circuit topology, load and control scheme to reflect the waveforms as in a real application, in order to get a more accurate assessment of the switching losses that will occur. This insight is the main contribution of this paper.

This paper investigates the soft switching performance of a 1.2 kV half-bridge SiC MOSFET module, FCA150XB120 from Sanrex. The selected module has both MOSFET and diode integrated on a single chip. A single pulse control circuit is employed in a half-bridge series resonant inverter topology with a split dc-link and an LC load in order to emulate a real inverter operation. This results in a square wave output voltage and a sine wave output current where the switching is performed before the zero crossing of current (an inductive mode). In addition, a calorimetric loss measurement is carried out in a 78 kW full-bridge resonant inverter switching at about 200 kHz yielding an efficiency of 99 %. Moreover, this paper aims to find the highest possible switching frequency achievable with the selected module. Besides, the electrically measured loss is compared with the calorimetrically measured loss and the possible reasons for discrepancies are discussed.

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