Lifetime Estimation of GaN based DC-DC Converter of Electric Vehicle Application

The wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor device-based converters offer improved performance over Si-based converters. In addition to increased efficiency the WBG-based power converters minimizes converter size due to capability of operating at high switching frequency. The GaN semiconductor device is having higher efficiency among all the existing semiconductor devices. To apply these devices in power converters the lifetime of the converters is important to analyze under application-specific condition. Hence, reliability analysis of the GaN-based dual active bridge converter is considered in this paper. The reliability analysis method of the GaN-based converters is required due to its unique structure and properties. Hence, a novel reliability analysis model is proposed in this paper to determine the lifetime of a GaN converter. This converter is used for an onboard charger application of electric vehicles (EVs). The lifetime is analyzed by considering the constant current and constant voltage charging method of EVs. The proposed model is verified in simulation and analysis considering a 2kW EV charger. Additionally, the experimentation is performed to validate the model. The preliminary results are included in this paper.