Basic study on conductive characteristics of SiC power device for its application to AC/DC converter

Recently, the SiC-based power electronics device has been under development, which has more advanced electrical characteristics than conventional Si-based device. Main electrical characteristics of SiC-based power electronics device are high operational temperature, high withstanding voltage, low on-state resistance and fast switching frequency. Especially, forward voltage, including on-state resistance characteristics, is the important conductive feature on operational loss reduction of SiC-based power electronics device. To study SiC-based device experimentally, SiC-based Schottky barrier diode (SBD), as an example of SiC-based power electronics device, is examined on its temperature dependence of forward voltage in comparison with Si-based SBD. The application of SiC-based power electronics device to large capacity AC/DC converter is also discussed.