Application specific trade-offs for WBG SiC, GaN and high end Si power switch technologies

There is an increasing choice of power switches in the 600V to 1700V range for the application engineers. Besides the well-established Si SJ (Super Junction) MOSFETs and IGBTs now also silicon carbide (SiC) and latest gallium nitride (GaN) power switches are available for new designs. Complete new system optimizations are possible driven by totally different trade off options e.g. between static and dynamic losses and their temperature dependencies. In this paper we explain these trade-offs for the different device types and show the consequences based on some prominent sample applications.