Potential of improving PWM converter power density with advanced components

High power density power electronics converters are increasingly demanded. Generally speaking, raised switching frequency improves the power density. However, dramatically increasing frequency on the present level still depends on the advance of power electronic components in material property, packaging technique, thermal management technique and etc. This paper surveys the recent material development of key components in the PWM power converters and then try to quantify the potential of improving the system power density by using advanced components. For illustrating this potential, power densities of air-cooled dual active bridge DC-DC converters (12 V-360 V, 1 kW) with three categories of components are analyzed and compared, namely state-of-art components, available advanced components and future components. The future components assume ten times better loss-related properties than those of the advanced components currently available.