Expectations of next-generation power devices for home and consumer appliances

This paper describes expected effects and characteristics required for next-generation power devices to be used in home appliances and consumer electronics. This paper focuses on the challenges presented by the IH cooking heater, energy storage systems, and solar power generation system and presents the circuits that will solve these challenges. Also, requirements for power devices used for the circuits are specified. The authors also show the effect of reducing the recovery loss when a SiC diode is applied to the boost converter. Moreover, the efficiency characteristics are compared for using the SJ-MOSFET and IGBT in the boost converter. The experimental results revealed that SJ-MOSFET improves the efficiency by 0.3 percentage point more than the IGBT. By using the SiC diode and SJ-MOSFET, efficiency of the boost converter is 98.7 % at rating 5.7 kW and output DC 380 V.