Compact Inverter Designed for High-Temperature Operation

This paper presents an integrated 10 kW inverter designed to operate in the demanding automotive environment. To achieve good compactness and high reliability to thermal cycling, several original approaches have been implemented together: the power modules are built with a sandwich structure, employing mechanical improvements compared to existing comparable structures; these sandwich modules are cooled directly (i.e without an intermediate base-plate layer), with the cooling fluid being sprayed to improve heat extraction; finally, 1200 V silicon carbide devices are used for improved performance. The specific requirements of the automotive environment are described as well as the chosen approaches. Experimental results are presented, giving details of the electrical, thermal and reliability performance.