Electrothermal Management Using In-situ Junction Temperature Monitoring for Enhanced Reliability of SiC-Based Power Electronics

Silicon carbide (SiC) power devices promise the revolution of the next-generation power electronics converters, including its application in the electric Ship Power Systems (SPS). Device junction temperature varies as a function of converter operating conditions (e.g. load current, bus voltage) and operational parameters (e.g. switching frequency, modulation scheme), which adversely affect the device lifetime, especially for the emerging SiC devices. It is observed the device power loss is sensitive to gate drive output voltage, which can be utilized as an effective means to actively regulate the device junction temperature, and then improve the device lifetime and converter reliability. Moreover, for precise device thermal management, accurate junction temperature monitoring is essential. Therefore, this paper proposes a gate voltage-based electrothermal management using in-situ junction temperature monitoring for SiC-based converter. A Matlab/Simulink model considering an actual CREE SiC MOSFET validates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.