Long-Term Stability Test System for High-Voltage, High-Frequency SiC Power Devices

This paper presents a test system developed for long-term stability characterization of 10 kV Silicon Carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs and SiC diodes under 20 kHz hard switching conditions. The system is designed to test a single power switch and a single power diode for continuous or burst switching conditions up to 5 kV and 5 A. The test system includes a 4.5 kV to 5 kV boost converter to emulate a 22.5 kW hard switching power converter. An additional DC-DC converter is used to recover the power processed by the boost converter. The design criteria, simulation, and construction of the test system are discussed in this paper and the system operation is demonstrated using various high voltage devices including 4.5 kV Silicon IGBTs, 10-kV SiC MOSFETs and 15 kV stacked silicon diodes.