Contribution to Health Monitoring of Silicon Carbide MOSFET

Abstract

Power converters' usage is expanding ever in industrial ap-plications as they provide flexibility, high level of performances and new functionalities. However, with increased complexity come new constraints with respect to reliability. This chapter covers a study on reliability of a lab-scale power electronic module taken here as a vehicle. The downsizing of converters and new application-related operating constraints are accompanied by an increase in current density. The use of Silicon Car-bide wide-gap technology in power modules is therefore attracting but remains a challenge because this technology is not yet mature and does not benefit from the deep knowledge established about Silicon counter-part. Therefore, health monitoring has naturally emerged as an effective way to implement a reliability assessment. After a brief description of the expected failure modes, an experimental failure monitoring bench will be presented. The choice and implementation of failure indicators through a classification using a neural network will be discussed and presented.