September 4, 2009

SiC has proven to be a good candidate as a material for next generation power semiconductors. To analyse the advantages of SiC based power devices over their silicon counterparts, a high volume and standard application segment such as the 400 to 480VAC line rated motor drives is considered to be ideal. From this viewpoint, the present research work has focussed on 1200V class device technologies. 4H-SiC based MOSFET and SBD structures have been considered to be the best fit device configurations for the targeted application category. New SiC-MOSFET/SBD structures have been developed aiming at high power density applications. Performance details of such newly fabricated SiC devices, along with their evaluation under actual operating conditions, are also introduced.