High temperature inductive switching of SiC GTO and diode

Future US Army motor control applications will require power devices to operate for thousands of hours at case temperatures of 150°C and higher. For reliable operation of silicon (Si)-base power electronic, the operational case temperature must be below 120°C. Because of this temperature limitation of Si, new wide bandgap materials such as silicon carbide (SiC) are being investigated. The wide bandgap material allows SiC devices to operate at temperatures significantly greater than 150°C. For high power and high voltage applications the gate turn-off thyristor (GTO) is the switch of choice. This paper presents the results of a SiC GTO and a SiC p-i-n diode both operating at case temperatures up to 150°C. The GTO switches into an inductive load with currents up to 5 Amps, baseplate temperature up to 150°C and switching frequency up to 10 kHz.