Potential of GaN Semiconductors in Electric Vehicle Inverters

Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs are already a state of the art solution in modern passenger cars and achieve a high loss reduction compared to their silicon IGBT counterparts. Gallium nitride (GaN) is a next generation wide bandgap (WBG) technology that promises the same or even higher efficiency than SiC combined with lower costs due to the manufacturing process. In this contribution, the potential of GaN is addressed with driving cycle and power loss simulations based on double pulse measurements. Benefits, drawbacks and the right use case for GaN in traction inverters are shown and discussed based on these results.