A High Power Density Inverter Design Based on GaN Power Devices

Wide band-gap (WBG) semiconductor devices have been widespread concerned due to their superior performance over conventional Si power devices and are expected to further improve the efficiency and power density of the power converters. In this paper, a full-bridge inverter design based on GaN power devices is presented. The carrier phase-shifted SPWM scheme is adopted to double the equivalent frequency of magnetic components. The gate driving circuits are carefully designed due to the sensitivity to the parasitic parameters of the gate driving loops. Moreover, bottom cooling thermal design and common mode noise reduction methods are adopted for the performance improvement of the inverter. Based on these considerations, a 500W single-phase full bridge inverter prototype is built. The key parameters and experimental results are presented. The power density is calculated as 60 W/inch
³
and the peak efficiency is 96.2% at full load.