Heavily Electron-irradiated High Resistive 4H-SiC pin diode for Turn-on Snubber of 200kVA Class High Power SiCGT Inverter

High resistive SiC pin diodes with heavy electron irradiation are proposed for the turn-on snubber circuit as an alternative to the conventional resistor and diode. The inverter circuit was greatly miniaturized by mounting the high resistive SiC pin diode in a SiCGT (SiC commutated gate turn-off thyristor) module and using no heat sink for the resistor. Using this inverter circuit, stable 100 kVA inverter operation for 150 hours was demonstrated with stable forward characteristics of the high resistive SiC pin diode. Furthermore, the high resistive SiC pin diode was demonstrated to be useable in the high output 200 kVA class power inverter.