Design and performance of a high frequency silicon carbide inverter

The advantages offered by wide band gap materials enable the design of converters with high power density for high performance applications. This paper presents the design and test results for a high frequency (400kHz) hard switched two level silicon carbide based three phase inverter. Using device and system parasitic models, the losses in the converter are predicted and validated using experimental tests. A calorimetric setup is utilized to accurately measure the performance of the inverter and efficiencies of 91% are obtained at a load of 4kVA and a switching frequency of 400kHz.