An Integrated Silicon Carbide (SiC) Based Single Phase Rectifier with Power Factor Correction

Silicon carbide (SiC) based power devices exhibit superior properties such as very low switching losses, fast switching behavior, improved reliability and high temperature operation capabilities. These properties contribute toward the ability to increase switching frequency, decrease the size of passive components and switches, and reduce the need for cooling, thus making the devices an excellent candidate for AC/DC power supplies. In this paper a SiC based integrated single phase rectifier with power factor correction (PFC) is presented. The proposed topology has many advantages including fewer semiconductor components; the presence of AC side inductor resulting in reduced EMI interference, and higher performance. This approach takes advantage of the superior properties of SiC devices and the reduced number of devices in the proposed converter to achieve higher efficiency, smaller size and better performance at high temperature. A performance and efficiency evaluation of the rectifier is presented and the results are compared with benchmark Si solutions