Analytical modeling of switching energy of silicon carbide schottky diodes as Functions of diDS/dt and temperature

Saeed Jahdi, Olayiwola Alatise, Li Ran, Philip Mawby

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

18 Citations (Scopus)
53 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

SiC Schottky Barrier diodes (SiC SBD) are known to oscillate/ring in the output terminal when used as free-wheeling diodes in voltage-source converters. This ringing is due to RLC resonance among the diode capacitance, parasitic resistance, and circuit stray inductance. In this paper, a model has been developed for calculating the switching energy of SiC diodes as a function of the switching rate (dIDS/dt of the commutating SiC MOSFET) and temperature. It is shown that the damping of the oscillations increases with decreasing temperature and decreasing dIDS/dt. This in turn determines the switching energy of the diode, which initially decreases with decreasing dIDS/dt and subsequently increases with decreasing dIDS/dt thereby indicating an optimal dIDS/dt for minimum switching energy. The total switching energy of the diode can be subdivided into three phases namely the current switching phase, the voltage switching phase, and the ringing phase. Although the switching energy in the current switching phase decreases with increasing switching rate, the switching energy of the voltage and ringing phase increases with the switching rate. The model developed characterizes the dependence of diode's switching energy on temperature and dIDS/dt, hence, can be used to predict the behavior of the SiC SBD.

Original languageEnglish
Article number6844877
Pages (from-to)3345-3355
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
Volume30
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Jun 2015

Keywords

  • Analytical modeling
  • Device characterization
  • Schottky barrier diode (SBD)
  • Silicon carbide
  • Switching energy

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