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This paper offers the first demonstration of the design and layout of a fully integrated power converter in a monolithic Silicon Carbide (SiC) technology. A 400V Buck Converter integrated with Gate-Drivers and Low-Voltage Control circuitry in a 25V-600V Mixed-Mode SiC CMOS technology has been presented in this paper. A new SiC technology has been developed for this design which has a feature size of 1µm. This technology allows integration of High-Voltage Power FETs and Low-Voltage CMOS circuits on the same die with a common substrate. Both high-side and low-side Power FETs are N-type hence a bootstrap circuit is used, and the gate drivers use an isolated capacitive level shifter to translate the signals from the 25V domain to the 400V domain which is the input voltage of the Buck Converter. The load current is 1A and the nominal output voltage is 100V thereby meaning that the output power is 100W. The switching frequency is up to 1MHz, and the duty cycle can range from 10% to 90% signifying a wide range of operation of the converter.

In today’s day and age, power electronic components are found in all areas of an electric vehicle, from power train to motors and from battery to ancillary loads. Power converters are used to optimize energy management in an automobile. While doing the electrical design of a power converter, the thermal aspects are usually neglected causing a vast difference in the simulation and real-life application. This paper aims to show how taking thermal characteristics into account for a power converter is beneficial and how it influences the results.

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