Electronics in Motion and Conversion February 2017

ISSN: 1863-5598 ZKZ 64717
02-17
Electronics in Motion and Conversion February 2017

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www.gva-leistungselektronik.de

CONTENT
Viewpoint ........................................................................................... 4
Respect for Others
Events ................................................................................................ 4
News ..............................................................................................6-10
Blue Product of the Month .............................................................. 11
Unidirectional Linear Hall Sensor IC in Surface-Mount Package
By Allegro
Guest Editorial ........................................................................... 13-15
Knowles Capacitors Update
By Chris Dugan, President of Precision Devices
Technology ................................................................................. 16-17
International Electron Devices Meeting—IEDM 2016
By Gary M. Dolny, Bodo’s Power Systems
Cover Story ................................................................................ 18-22
Measurement of Loss in High-Frequency Reactors
By Kazunobu Hayashi, Hioki E.E. Corporation
IGBTs .......................................................................................... 24-26
The Next Generation Bimode Insulated Gate Transistors
Based on Enhanced Trench Technology
By Munaf Rahimo, Chiara Corvasce, Maxi Andenna,
Charalampos Papadopoulos and Arnost Kopta;
ABB Switzerland Ltd, Semiconductors
IGBTs .......................................................................................... 28-30
Modern Induction Cooking Demands Compact and Efficient Solutions
By Giuseppe DeFalco, Infineon Technologies AG
IGBT Modules ............................................................................ 32-34
LV100 - a Dual Power Module for the Next Generation
Railway Inverters
By Eugen Stumpf and Eugen Wiesner,
MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC Europe, and Kenji Hatori, Hitoshi Uemura
and Shinichi Iura, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC Japan.
Power Modules .......................................................................... 36-38
Three-Level Topology for Single-Phase Solar Applications
By Baran Özbakir, Vincotech GmbH
Lighting ...................................................................................... 40-42
LED Dimming Engine: An 8-bit MCU-based solution
for a Switched-Mode Dimmable LED driver
By Mark Pallones, Principal Applications Engineer,
Microchip Technology Inc.
OPTO .......................................................................................... 44-47
GaN Transistor Gate Drive Optocouplers
By Robinson Law, Applications Engineer and Chun Keong Tee,
Product Manager, Broadcom Limited
Packaging .................................................................................. 48-51
Ag-Sintering as an Enabler for Thermally Demanding Electronic
and Semiconductor Applications
By Marco Koelink, Business Development Manager and Commercial
Manager and Michiel de Monchy, Advanced Packaging Center (APC),
European Applications Manager Die Attach and Preforms, Alpha
Battery ........................................................................................ 52-54
Qualification and Verification of High-Power Battery Systems for
Traction Application
By Johannes Büdel, M.Eng. and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Teigelkötter,
University of Applied Sciences Aschaffenburg and Dipl.-Ing. Klaus
Lang, HBM Test and Measurement
Technology ................................................................................. 56-60
The Creation of SiC - “Cell Structures and Production Process”
By Aly Mashaly and Mineo Miura, ROHM Semiconductor GmbH
New Products ............................................................................ 62-64

The Gallery
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VIEWPOINT
CONTENT
A Media
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D-24235 Laboe, Germany
Phone: +49 4343 42 17 90
Fax: +49 4343 42 17 89
editor@bodospower.com
www.bodospower.com
Publishing Editor
Bodo Arlt, Dipl.-Ing.
editor@bodospower.com
Junior Editor
Holger Moscheik
Phone + 49 4343 428 5017
holger@bodospower.com
Senior Editor
Donald E. Burke, BSEE, Dr. Sc(hc)
don@bodospower.com
UK Support
June Hulme
Phone: +44(0) 1270 872315
junehulme@geminimarketing.co.uk
Creative Direction & Production
Repro Studio Peschke
Repro.Peschke@t-online.de
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assume and hereby disclaim any
liability to any person for any loss or
damage by errors or omissions in the
material contained herein regardless
of whether such errors result from
negligence accident or any other cause
whatsoever.
Respect For Others
We must look ahead and improve our world
– people must respect each other. We cannot
survive in a society without ethics. It is
a common phenomenon that those with the
most rude behavior are the ones to survive
the political fray and end up as our leaders.
The well-educated and morally-ethical must
work hard to get into leadership positions
and restore respect.
What are the pressing issues we must to
solve? We need to limit global warming to
insure a future for our children. Electronics
can help by reducing emission from combustion
engines. Ignition IGBT’s, injection
delivery of fuel, and computer control have
contributed to improvements made thus far.
Electric drive motors with variable speed
control through power electronics make hybrid
and fully electric cars possible. We can
expect continued progress with Wide Band
Gap semiconductors in systems that reduce
losses and lower temperatures.
About a month from now, in March, we will
meet in Tampa Florida, at APEC, to discuss
recent progress. Engineers from all around
the world will come together to present and
discuss their latest results. It is great to see
them all at a big family party; young and old.
They’re a well-established group of people,
who I have known for decades, working
on progress in semiconductors. The world
changes, and sometimes companies get
purchased and significant contributors do
not receive the respect they deserve. But
it is good to see them survive with a little
help from friends. The social aspects of
the Tampa conference provide a venue for
integration, to treat each other with respect,
to ignore the handicaps of others, to learn
and understand from one other, and move on
together as a progressive society. Through
our respect and cooperation we can provide
a positive example to our children. I look
forward to seeing you in a few weeks at the
APEC conference in Tampa.
Bodo’s Power Systems reaches readers
across the globe. If you are using any kind
of tablet or smart phone, you will now find
all of our content on the new website www.
eepower.com. If you speak the language, or
just want to have a look, don’t miss our Chinese
version: www.bodospowerchina.com
My Green Power Tip for February:
Don’t heat your bedroom in the winter time.
Instead, use bed covers with the feathers
from geese. Your own heat will keep you
warm – my experience is that you will sleep
much better !
Best Regards
Smartsystemsintegration
Corck Ireland, March 8-9
http://www.smartsystemsintegration.com
Battery University 2107
Aschaffenburg, Germany, March 14-16
http://www.battery-experts-forum.com/
Embedded World 2017
Nuremberg, Germany, March 14-16
http://www.embedded-world.de
EMC 2017
Stuttgart, Germany, March 28-30
http://www.mesago.de/en/EMV/home.htm
Events
APEC 2017
Tampa FL , March 26-30
http://www.apec-conf.org/
Internat. Power Workshop on Packaging
Delft, The Netherlands, April 5-7
http://iwipp.org/
ExpoElectronica 2017
Moscow Russia, April 25-27,
http://expoelectronica.primexpo.ru/en/
SMT Hybrid 2017
Nuremberg, Germany, May 16-18
http://www.mesago.de/en/SMT/home.htm
PCIM Europe 2017
Nuremberg, Germany, May 16-18
http://www.mesago.de/en/PCIM/home.htm
Sensor + Test 2017
Nuremberg, Germany, May 30 June1
http://www.sensor-test.com/press
Intersolar 2017
Munich, Germany, May 31 June 2
www.intersolar.de/de/intersolar-europe.html
PCIM Asia 2017
Shanghai, China, June 27-29
http://www.mesago.de/en/PCC/home.htm
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Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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CONTENT NEWS
Mouser Signs Global Distribution Agreement with United Silicon Carbide, Inc.
Mouser Electronics, Inc. announces a global distribution agreement
with United Silicon Carbide, Inc. (USCi), a manufacturer of high-efficiency
silicon carbide (SiC) products. USCi technology and products
enable affordable power efficiency in key markets, including wind and
solar power, transportation, smart grid technology, and motor control.
The USCi product line available from Mouser Electronics includes
650V and 1200V SiC Schottky diodes. USCi 650V Schottky diodes
are available in a TO-220 package with forward currents ranging
from 4A to 10A, or in a TO-247 package with forward currents of 16A
or 20A. The 650V diodes in the TO-220 package are also available
with either enhanced surge capabilities or a surge bypass silicon
diode that is ideal for AC/DC boost and power factor correction (PFC)
Hydrogen + Fuel Cells NORTH AMERICA at SPI 2017, Las Vegas
Deutsche Messe’s subsidiary Hannover Fairs
USA in cooperation with Tobias Renz FAIR
will organize the first Hydrogen + Fuel Cells
(H2+FC) NORTH AMERICA.
SPI 2017 is North America’s biggest solar
trade fair, around 700 exhibitors and 20.000
visitors are expected. The Energy Storage
International (ESI), the largest energy storage
event in North America with more than
115 exhibitors, will be co-located with the SPI
2017 as well.
Hydrogen + Fuel Cell exhibitors profit from
several synergy effects between the solar
and energy storage industry. The topics of
Mouser Electronics, was honored with the prestigious Top Member
Award at the summit of the Chinese Electronics Distributor Alliance
(CEDA) held recently in Shenzhen. Additionally, Mouser’s Senior Vice
President of EMEA and APAC Business, Mark Burr-Lonnon, received
the Service Distribution Community Excellence Award. Burr-Lonnon
serves on the executive board of CEDA.
H2+FC NORTH AMERICA will be hydrogen
generation, storage and transportation, fuel
cell systems and applications, stationary-,
Top Member Award at CEDA Summit in China
Rogers Corporation will review by a webinar the design of the DC
link System using optimized solutions based on integrated capacitorbusbar
technology. Due to lower overshoot voltages and less uF/kW
of required total capacitance, this solution offers lower total system
cost and increased power density. The integrated capacitor-busbar
assemblies are developed for critical DC link applications in traction
drive inverters for HEV/EV, and inverter systems for solar and wind
power.
This webinar will be presented by Dominik Pawlik, he is a Product
Innovation Manager with more than 15 years of experience in sales,
converters. USCi 1200V Schottky diodes are available in a TO-220
package in forward voltages of 5A to 15A, or in a TO-247 package
with a voltage of 20A or 30A.
With zero reverse recovery charge and a maximum junction temperature
of 175 degrees Celsius, USCi’s RoHS-compliant diodes are
ideally suited for high-frequency and high-efficiency power systems
with minimum cooling requirements.
automotive-, mobile fuel cells, special
markets, components and supplying technology,
fuel cell and battery testing.
H2+FC NORTH AMERICA is being organized
via Deutsche Messe’s subsidiary
Hannover Fairs USA in cooperation with
Tobias Renz FAIR.
SOLARPOWER International (SPI 2017);
September 10-13, 2017; Mandalay Bay
Convention Center
Las Vegas, NV, USA
www.h2fc-fair.com/usa
CEDA aims to advance the value of authorized distributors in China
by enhancing executive networking, cooperation between distributors
and suppliers, shaping business regulations and serving as a bridge
between industry and government to promote a stronger business environment.
Mouser has long been a strong proponent of standards set
by CEDA and the Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA)
to promote the value of genuine electronic components.
As a founding member of CEDA, Mouser had a large presence at the
summit, helping to release the 2016 China Authorized Electronics
Distributors Directory and participating in a thought leadership forum
on the electronics supply chain. Conference attendees included many
government officials, industry leaders and supply chain experts who
discussed how best to achieve strategic collaboration in promoting the
electronics industry in western China as well as strategies for supply
chain optimization.
Performance Optimization of DC Link Systems
www.mouser.com/usci/
www.unitedsic.com/usci/
www.mouser.com
product management and business development in electrical industrial
markets. He holds an MSc Eng, in Electrical Engineering and for
the past two years has been employed at Rogers Corporation.
Date: February 16th, 2017 15h00 Central European Time CET,
Register now at:
www.electronics-know-how.com/article/2422/performance-optimization-of-dc-link-systems
www.rogerscorp.com
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Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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CONTENT NEWS
Enhanced Radiation Hardened MOSFET Family for Space
IR HiRel, an Infineon Technologies AG company,
has launched its first radiation hardened
MOSFETs based on the proprietary N-
channel R9 technology platform. Compared
to previous technologies it is offering size,
weight and power improvements. This is significant
in systems such as high-throughput
satellites, where the cost-per-bit-ratio can be
significantly reduced. The 100 V, 35 A MOS-
FETs are ideally suited to mission-critical
applications requiring an operating life up
to and beyond 15 years. Target applications
include space-grade DC-DC converters, intermediate
bus converters, motor controllers
and other high speed switching designs.
Developed by the Infineon IR HiRel business,
the IRHNJ9A7130 and IRHNJ9A3130
are fully characterized for TID (total ionizing
dose) immunity to radiation of 100 kRads
and 300 kRads respectively. An R DS(on)
of 25 mΩ (typical) is 33 percent lower than
the previous device generation.
In combination with
Expanding Expertise in Electric Mobility
The automotive and industrial supplier Schaeffler has concluded a
purchase contract with SEMIKRON International GmbH for the acquisition
of 51% of the shares of Compact Dynamics GmbH, a manufacturer
of high-performance electric motors. At the same time, Schaeffler
and SEMIKRON have agreed a cooperation for the development
of power electronics systems and the integration of power electronics
components. With this acquisition and cooperation, Schaeffler is expanding
its expertise in electric motors and power electronics for the
development and production of electric drives.
“As part of our “Mobility for tomorrow” strategy, we regard electric
mobility as one of the major opportunities for the future. With the acquisition
of Compact Dynamics and the cooperation with SEMIKRON,
we are adding to our existing technology portfolio and opening up new
opportunities for growth”, said Klaus Rosenfeld, CEO of Schaeffler
AG.
increased drain current capability (35 A vs.
22 A), this allows the MOSFETs to provide
increased power density and reduced power
losses in switching applications.
The MOSFETs have improved Single Event
Effect (SEE) immunity and have been characterized
for useful performance with Linear
Energy Transfer (LET) up to 90 MeV/(mg/
cm²); at least 10 percent higher than previous
generations. Both of the new devices
are packaged in a hermetically sealed,
lightweight, surface mount ceramic package
(SMD-0.5) measuring just 10.28 mm x 7.64
mm x 3.12 mm. They are also available in
bare die form.
www.infineon.com/R9-space-grade-MOSFET.
Compact Dynamics GmbH based in Starnberg (Germany) is a development
specialist in the field of innovative, electric drive concepts
with a focus on high-performance drives and integrated lightweight
construction in small volume production and motor sport applications.
Schaeffler and Compact Dynamics have been working together with
a great deal of success for many years, among other things, on the
development of the electric drive for the Audi ABT Schaeffler Team
in the FIA Formula E electric racing series. By acquiring this majority
shareholding and securing an option for the acquisition of the remaining
shares mid-2018, the Schaeffler Group is obtaining essential
expertise for the development and production of its own electric
motors for automobile applications. The transaction is envisaged to
be completed in the first quarter of 2017 and the parties are bound to
secrecy about the details.
www.semikron.com
Supplier Award 2016 for Outstanding Supplier Performance
PINK GmbH Thermosysteme, well-known as a manufacturer
of quality and innovative soldering technology, received the
Supplier Award in recognition of outstanding supplier performance
in the category “back-end high-power equipment”
during the Infineon Global Supplier Days in Kuala Lumpur on
16 November 2016.
This special commendation for innovation and cooperation
was personally presented to Ms Andrea Althaus (Managing
Director of PINK GmbH Thermosysteme) by Dr Kohring
(Managing Director of Infineon Technologies AG, Warstein)
and Ms Fischer (Head of Purchasing, Warstein).
PINK and Infineon can look back on many years of successful
cooperation. PINK is very proud to have received this
award from Infineon Technologies AG, the internationally
reputed world market leader with power semiconductors and
modules.
“At the same time, this should serve as an incentive for us
to continue to aim for and embrace innovation, high quality
and partnership in our future cooperation for and with our
customers,” said Ms Althaus addressing to her employees.
From left to right: Ms Fischer, Ms Althaus, Dr. Kohring
www.pink.de
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Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

CONTENT NEWS
Batteryuniversity Tests Batteries for e-mobility
With Batteryuniversity GmbH’s (BU) new test benches, large batteries
for electric cars or electric forklifts can be tested as of December. “BU
has invested €1.4 million in the new devices. It is therefore well-positioned
for the future of battery testing in the field of electric mobility,”
says Sven Bauer, Managing Director of Batteryuniversity GmbH.
Shaker and vacuum chamber for standard compliance and development
testing: BU’s new 120 kilonewton shaker can be loaded with a
weight of 800 kilograms and can test random profiles, sine sweep,
superimposed sine and shock impulses. The head expander and the
sliding table of the shaker have mounting dimensions of 1.5 x 1.5
metres. The frequency can be set between 5 and 2500 hertz.
In addition, a low-pressure chamber with a size of 8 x 3 x 3 metres
was installed, allowing for the testing of huge battery units or other
components. Via the control unit, different low pressure profiles of up
to 1 millibar can be programmed. “With the new test benches, we are
expanding BU’s services for our customers in the automotive sector.
With the shaker and the low-pressure chamber, we can also test
components from the aerospace sector,“ says the head of Batteryuniversity
GmbH, Dr. Jochen Mähliß.
Special battery test circuits: The BU offers electrical testing of large
battery units during the development process or according to the
specifications of the respective standard. Using special battery test
circuits, battery units of up to 850 V and 1200 A can be charged and
discharged. The maximum power is 350 kilowatts. Four “smaller”
battery circuits can also be interconnected to achieve 2400 amperes
and 120 volts.
The BU is an accredited testing laboratory for battery tests and environmental
tests and examines the quality and safety of products. In
addition, BU offers a wide range of training
for battery developers and users, project and product managers as
well as purchasing and logistics specialists.
Dr. Jochen Mähliss (left) and Simon Wedlich (right)
at batteryuniversity
www.batteryuniversity.eu
USD100 Million Order to Upgrade Historic HVDC link in the U.S.
ABB has won an order worth more than $100 million from the U.S.
utility Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP), to
modernize the existing Sylmar HVDC (high-voltage direct current)
converter station in California. This station is an important part of the
electricity link between the Pacific Northwest and southern California
commissioned in 1970. The order was booked in the fourth quarter of
2016.
The Sylmar converter station, located to the north of Los Angeles, is
the southern station of the Pacific Intertie, a 1,360 kilometer HVDC
link that connects to the Celilo converter station near the Columbia
River, Oregon. The Pacific Intertie transmits electricity from the Pacific
Northwest to as many as three million households in the greater Los
Angeles area. Normally, the power flow is from north to south, but during
the winter, the north consumes significant quantities of power for
heating while the south requires less, and the power flow is reversed.
The Pacific Intertie allows power to flow between the Northwest and
Southern California, helping to balance supply with demand.
www.abb.com
Transforming Magnetics ‘Black Magic’ into Engineering
The Power Sources Manufacturers Association (PSMA) and the
IEEE Power Electronics Society (IEEE PELS) are jointly sponsoring
an all-day workshop titled “Power Magnetics at High Frequency –
Transforming the Black Magic into Engineering,” on Saturday, March
25, 2017, the day before and in the same venue as APEC 2017 at
the Tampa Convention Center. This workshop follows the successful
inaugural event held in Long Beach, CA, prior to the start of APEC
2016. Last year’s workshop was completely sold out, so individuals
interested in attending this year’s event are encouraged to register
early.
The target audience for this workshop is anyone working to achieve
higher power densities, low profile aspect ratio, higher efficiencies,
and improved thermal performance. The workshop will comprise five
sessions:
Keynote presentations will set the tone of the day’s presentations and
demonstrations by reviewing the impact of magnetic design on power
converter performance and by providing an overview of the trade-offs
in the application of various magnetic materials
A special panel presentation will address equipment considerations
and factors impacting high-frequency core loss measurement accuracy
www.psma.com/technical-forums/magnetics/workshop
10
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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BLUE CONTENT PRODUCT OF THE MONTH
Unidirectional Linear Hall Sensor
IC in Surface-Mount Package
Factory-programmed device is ideal for automotive and industrial applications requiring
high accuracy and small package size -
The ALS31000 from Allegro MicroSystems is a unidirectional linear
Hall sensor IC targeted at automotive and industrial applications such
as displacement and angular position sensing which require highaccuracy
operation combined with a small package size.
Each BiCMOS monolithic circuit integrates a Hall element, temperature-compensating
circuitry to reduce the intrinsic sensitivity drift
of the Hall element, a small-signal high-gain amplifier, a clamped
low-impedance output stage, and a proprietary dynamic offset cancellation
technique. The features of this linear device make it ideal for
use in automotive and industrial applications requiring high accuracy
and operation across an extended temperature range from -40°C to
+150°C.
Allegro’s ALS31000 sensor IC family is offered in
the LH package style: a SOT-23W style, miniature,
low-profile package for surface-mount applications.
The package is lead (Pb) free, with 100% matt-tin
leadframe plating.
Please click here to download a copy of the
ALS31000 linear Hall-effect sensor IC data sheet.
http://www.allegromicro.com/BD17
The accuracy of this factory-programmed device is enhanced via
end-of-line programming of the temperature coefficient to optimise
both sensitivity and quiescent voltage output across the full operating
temperature range.
The ALS3100 is a ratiometric Hall-effect sensor IC which provides
a voltage output proportional to the applied magnetic field. The
quiescent voltage output is adjusted to around 0.7 V and the output
sensitivity is set to 2.4 mV/G.
About Allegro
Allegro MicroSystems, LLC is a leader in developing,
manufacturing and marketing high-performance
semiconductors. Allegro’s innovative solutions serve
high-growth applications within the automotive
market, with additional focus on office automation,
industrial, and consumer/communications solutions.
Allegro is headquartered in Worcester, Massachusetts
(USA) with design, applications, and sales
support centres located worldwide. Further information
about Allegro can be found at:
www.allegromicro.com
Allegro MicroSystems Europe, headquartered in Chertsey, United
Kingdom, is the European sales and marketing operation, and
operates a network of representatives and distributors throughout
Europe. Allegro has technical and marketing centres in Heidelberg
and Hinterzarten in Germany. Allegro also has an engineering design
centre in Edinburgh in Scotland and a technical and marketing centre
in Annecy in France.
12
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

Automotive Home Appliances Industrial Power Transmission Renewables Railway
One of our
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Power Devices from
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LV100 and HV100: The new high voltage power modules of Mitsubishi Electric
for a safe and greener tomorrow. The newly developed dual module structure
is reducing the thermal stress applied to Si- and SiC-power chips, enabling a
low internal package inductance and allowing good scalability for flexible power
electronics solutions. Latest proved technologies are applied to satisfy reliable
operation and long life time requirements in demanding applications as Railway,
Wind generators and MV-drives.
LV100 and HV100 High Voltage
Power Modules
- IGBT chips with latest generation
CSTBT TM technology and RFC diodes
- Robust main terminals suitable for
doubling the rated module current in case
of using SiC-chips
- Eliminating of substrate solder by new MCB
(Metal Casting direct Bonding) technology
- High robustness/resistance against environmental
influences due to the newly developed
SCC (Surface Charge Control) process
- Module case material suitable for high
pollution degree and fire inhibition according
to EN45545
More Information:
semis.info@meg.mee.com
www.mitsubishichips.eu
Scan and learn more
about this product
series on YouTube.

GUEST CONTENT EDITORIAL
Knowles Capacitors Update
By Chris Dugan, President of Precision Devices
In 2014 Dielectric Laboratories (DLI),
Novacap, Syfer Technology and Voltronics
came together into a single organisation,
Knowles Capacitors. With a combined
history exceeding 175 years, and operating
as a division of Knowles Corporation
of USA, Knowles Capacitors was a merging
of some of the world’s leading speciality
capacitor manufacturers. The Precision
Devices division of Knowles is a $200m+
global manufacturer of precision capacitors,
components and crystal oscillators.
Knowles Capacitors, by virtue of its founding brands, is now a premier
global source for Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors, Single Layer Capacitors,
EMI suppression filters, Trimmer Capacitors, Thin Film Devices
and High Reliability Capacitors. Together the company serves a variety
of markets including military, aerospace/avionics, medical equipment,
implantable devices, EMI and connector filtering, oil exploration,
instrumentation, industrial electronics, automotive, telecoms and data
networks. Nearly 2 years on from its establishment, an update on the
company’s success, progression and upcoming developments was
delivered at Electronica 2016 by new President Chris Dugan.
Following the retirement of Knowles Precision Devices President,
Dave Wightman, the company appointed Chris Dugan as his replacement
in May 2016. Chris, a former Navy Seal of 9 years’ service,
earned a BA (cum laude) from the University of Rochester and an
MBA from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.
Chris most recently served as president, Americas for Bridon
Corporation. Prior to Bridon, Chris held general management, commercial
management, and M&A roles with Cooper Industries and
Carrier Corporation. Chris is based at the Knowles Capacitor facility
in Cazenovia, NY and oversees the activities of their four well known
capacitor brands – as well as frequency control specialist, Vectron
International.
Mexico. The 43,000m2 facility dedicates 10,000m2 solely to MLC production,
with space to expand further. The Suzhou factory has seen
more than a 50% increase in production capacity and is currently
delivering a better than 95% on time delivery service and a 6 week
lead time for standard products.
With the global R&D and manufacturing facilities now well established,
the focus is shifting to new product development. The current
pipeline contains 3 main focus areas for new innovative products
for demanding applications which includes; high voltage and higher
capacitance density MLCC’s for the replacement of film cap; high
temperature and high Q MLCC’s, miniature high-performance thin
film filters and high voltage, higher capacitance density SLC’s for high
frequency communication; higher temperature, high reliability MLCC’s
for automotive applications.
Figure 1: AECQ200 parts
Chris, assisted by Vice President James West, outlined the 5 global
facilities belonging to Knowles Capacitors (1 R&D in Norwich (UK); 3
production in Cazenovia (US), Valencia (US) and Suzhou (China); 1
distribution centre in Malaysia) which allow them to deliver products
and service around the world, no matter the location or time zone.
As recently announced, Knowles research and development Centre
in Norwich (UK) have moved to new hi-tech facilities at the Hethel
Engineering Centre. Knowles (UK) R&D facility has a traceable history
back to the 1940’s under Erie Electronics Ltd, before becoming
Syfer Technology in the 80’s. Over the years the R&D facility has
led the industry with leading technical advances producing products
of the highest quality, utilising superior materials that made Syfer a
global leader. Today the remit is to support all four operating brands in
developing new products.
This move reflects the commitment to R&D for the portfolio, manufactured
at facilities in Cazenovia, Valencia and the newest of the factories
in Suzhou, China. The capacitor facility located in the Xiangcheng
Economic Development Area in Suzhou completed the relocation of
Multilayer Ceramic Capacitor manufacturing from plants in the UK and
Figure 2: StackiCap_4_inc weights
Simon Mao, MLCC Product Manager, gave an insight at Electronica
2016 as to the new product developments taking place. In the field of
replacing film capacitors wherever size or temperature is a concern,
or an AC rating or a high C/V value is required then StackiCap
comes into its own. StackiCap surface mount MLCs are designed
to provide high CV in compact packages and offer the greatest
volumetric efficiency and CV per unit mass of any high voltage X7R
ceramic capacitors available. Knowles has conceived, developed
14
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

GUEST CONTENT EDITORIAL
and protected (GB Pat. App. 1210261.2) a unique process in order to
deliver this groundbreaking product. Combined with FlexiCap stress
relieving terminations these parts have the potential to replace film
and tantalum capacitors and make many stacked products obsolete.
StackiCap parts are suitable for a plethora of applications such as
switch mode power supplies for filtering, tank and snubber, DC-DC
converter, DC block, voltage multipliers etc. and will provide huge
benefits in applications where size and weight is critical. At this moment
1812, 2220 and 3640 case sizes have been launched and are
commercially available, sizes up to 8060 are still under development.
One of Knowles strategic market focus areas is in electric vehicle
charging, EV/HEV. Here the company sees its knowledge of producing
components used in harsh conditions to be of considerable benefit
to manufacturers – FlexiCap termination process and StackiCap
high C/V technology being in the forefront. Products like open mode
and safety certified Y2/X1 capacitors along with X2Y EMI filters are
just some that will be of interest.
www.knowlescapacitors.com
Note: Dielectric Laboratories (DLI), Novacap, Syfer Technology and
Voltronics have come together into a single organisation, Knowles
Capacitors. This new entity has a combined history exceeding 175
years and is a division of Knowles Corporation of USA, an independent
publicly traded company.
Figure 3: 1000nF typical_inc notes
Chris Dugan, President Of Precision Devices
Chris, a former Navy Seal of 9 years’ service, earned a BA (cum
laude) from the University of Rochester and an MBA from the
Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania. Chris
most recently served as president, Americas for Bridon Corporation.
Prior to Bridon, Chris held general management, commercial
management, and M&A roles with Cooper Industries and Carrier
Corporation. Chris is based at the Knowles Capacitor facility in
Cazenovia, NY and oversees the activities of their four well known
capacitor brands – as well as frequency control specialist, Vectron
International.
15

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
International Electron Devices
Meeting—IEDM 2016
2016 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting Showcases the Latest
Technology Developments in Micro/Nanoelectronics and Power Devices
By Gary M. Dolny, Bodo’s Power Systems, gary.dolny.us@ieee.org
The 62 nd annual IEEE International
Electron Devices Meeting, (IEDM) was
held in San Francisco, California, USA
December 3 - 7, 2016. For more than six
decades, the annual IEDM has been the
world’s largest and most influential forum
for technologists to unveil breakthroughs
in transistors, integrated circuits, and related
micro and nanoelectronics devices.
This year more than 1600 engineers and
scientists from around the world attended
the event which was held at the Hilton
San Francisco Union Square.
That tradition continued this year with a few new twists, including
a supplier exhibition and a later submission deadline for the final,
four-page paper. This streamlined process ensures that as the pace
of innovation in electronics quickens, IEDM remains the place to learn
about the latest and most important developments. The submission/
acceptance process continued to be highly competitive, with only approximately
a third of the submitted abstracts being accepted assuring
a high-quality technical program.
“The industry is moving forward at an accelerated pace to match
the increasing complexity of today’s world, and a later submission
deadline enables us to shorten the time between when results are
achieved in the lab and when they are presented at the IEDM,” said
Dr. Martin Giles, IEDM 2016 Publicity Chair, Intel Fellow, and Director
of Transistor Technology Variation in Intel’s Technology and Manufacturing
Group.
Tibor Grasser, IEDM 2016 Exhibits Chair, IEEE Fellow and Head of
the Institute for Microelectronics at TU Wien, added, “We decided to
have a supplier exhibition in conjunction with the technical program
this year, as an added way to provide attendees with the knowledge
and information they need to advance the state-of-the-art.” The exhibit
was an opportunity for the participants to learn about and interact
with key equipment manufacturers and other suppliers.
The conference began with a weekend program of 90-minute tutorials
and all-day Short Courses taught by industry leaders and world experts
in their respective technical disciplines. These weekend events
preceded a technical program of some 220 papers and a rich offering
of other events including thought-provoking plenary talks, spirited evening
panels, special focus sessions on topics of great interest, IEEE
awards and an event for entrepreneurs sponsored by IEDM and IEEE
Women in Engineering.
The power semiconductor device community was once again well
represented at this year’s IEDM. In addition to a full session of
contributed papers power devices were also the subject of one of
the conference’s Special Focus sessions entitled the System-Level
Impact of Power Devices. The Special Focus session featured a
series of invited talks by six experts in the field who detailed the
latest developments in wide-bandgap power devices, showed how
they are transforming power delivery systems, benchmarked material
characteristics and reliability, and considered future directions for the
technology.
Wide-bandgap power devices, particularly GaN, received the bulk
of the attention in both the contributed papers as well as the focus
session. A research group from Panasonic Corp., Japan, described
a normally off vertical current flow GaN transistor on a bulk GaN
substrate with low specific on-state resistance of 1.0 mω-cm 2 and
high off-state breakdown voltage of 1.7kV. The novel device structure
consisted of P-GaN/GaN/AlGaN layers grown epitaxially on V-shaped
trenches etched into the surface of the drift layer. The channel used
a so-called semipolar face to reduce carrier density and achieve a
threshold voltage of 2.5V. The device demonstrated stable operation
and fast switching at 400V/15A [1].
A group from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA demonstrated
a novel vertical GaN MIS Schottky barrier rectifier with implanted
trench field-ring termination. The basic device structure consisted
of multiple trenches with MIS structures fabricated along the trench
bottoms and sidewalls to achieve a TMBS-type shielding effect. Field
limiting rings were formed by Ar implantation into the trench bottoms
to further optimize the field distribution while the Scottky contact was
formed on the top surface. The reverse leakage current was improved
by a factor of over 10 4 and the breakdown voltage increased from 400
V to 700 V, while the low turn-on voltage (0.8 V) and on-resistance (2
mΩ·cm 2 ) were retained [2].
Another group from Panasonic Corp., Japan, demonstrated a current
collapse free GaN gate-injection transistor using a thick buffer layer
on a bulk GaN substrate. Because the GaN substrate eliminates lattice
and thermal mismatches a much thicker buffer layer (15μm) can
be used as compared to the conventional 5μm GaN-on-Si structure.
The thicker buffer layer offers a number of advantages including
reduced output capacitance to enable fast switching, as well as improved
crystal quality to suppress current collapse [3].
A collaboration between the Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology, and the Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech, China discussed
the use of a LPCVD SiN x gate dielectric for enhancement mode GaN-
MISFETs. The group utilized a novel interface protection technique,
in which a thin layer of low-temperature PECVD-SiN was inserted be-
16
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
tween the LPCVD SiN x and the GaN surface. The resulting structure
displayed greatly improved interface quality and resulted in a highly
reliable gate dielectric, a stable Vth of 2.34V, low R dson and small
dynamic R on degradation [4].
T. Terashima, of Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Japan, discussed the superior
performance of SiC power devices and their limitation due to selfheating.
He pointed out that although the theoretical on-state resistance
of SiC can be two-orders of magnitude lower than an equivalent
Si device, the increase of current density by reduced Ron,sp is suppressed
to 1/√Ron,sp under the same heat dissipation performance of
the packaging. An even more severe limitation is imposed by transient
self-heating under short-circuit operating conditions, where the low
Ron causes rapid temperature rise. He concluded that to fully realize
the benefits offered by the superior performance of SiC, it is necessary
to develop high-speed protection circuitry to limit the short circuit
event to about 2 μsec, as well as to improve thermal performance of
packaging [5].
A research group from the University of Tsukuba, Japan, presented a
p-channel SiC MOSFET with high short circuit withstand time capability.
The target application was complimentary inverter applications
with the goal of reducing circuit deadtime and thereby improving the
total harmonic distortion in the output waveform. The device showed
15% higher short circuit energy, improved gate oxide reliability and
improved avalanche ruggedness compared to an equivalent n-channel
SiC MOSFET. Although on-state resistance was high, several
approaches for its reduction were proposed [6].
G. Rescher and his colleagues from Technische Universtat Wein,
Austria, reported a hysteresis in the subthreshold current on n-
channel SiC MOSFETs due to the presence of border traps. However
the voltage shift is fully recoverable when a bias above threshold is
applied and does not impact reliability [7].
Although the focus was on wide-bandgap devices silicon IGBTs still
maintained a presence. K. Kukishima of Tokyo Institute of Technology,
Japan, along with a number of industrial and academic collaborators
described a three-dimensional scaling approach to achieve a very
low Vcesat IGBT. The scaling is applied to vertical and lateral dimensions
as well as to the gate voltage. A significant decrease in on-state
voltage, from 1.70V to 1.26 V was experimentally confirmed [8].
The special focus session featured a number of presentations addressing
how wide-bandgap devices will impact future power delivery
systems. A. Huang of North Carolina State University, USA presented
a review of the recent progress in wide-bandgap devices and commented
on their potential transformative impacts on low, medium and
high-power delivery systems [9], while A. Lidow of EPC Corp. USA,
focused on the application of GaN devices in server applications and
examined the various tradeoffs involved in converting a 48V bus down
to a 1.0V load [10]. Similarly, H. Isheda, of Panasonic Corp., Japan,
reviewed the current status of the GaN gate injection transistors for
integrated circuits and their application to power switching systems
[11]. G. Deboy of Infineon, Germany compared key parameters such
as capacitances & switching losses for silicon, SiC and GaN power
devices with respect to applications in switch mode power supplies
operating from a single-phase AC line. His analysis concluded that
silicon devices will prevail in classic hard switching applications at
moderate switching frequencies whereas SiC and GaN based power
devices will play to their full benefits in resonant topologies at moderate
to high switching frequencies [12].
A group from Texas Instruments, USA, investigated the applications
reliability of GaN devices. They showed that traditional reliability
qualification methodologies may not be adequate for emerging power
management technologies because fundamental switching transitions
are not covered. They further showed that hard switching using
a double-pulse test is predictive of device performance under most
system applications and that their experimental devices could pass
standard qual and perform well in applications [13].
Finally, H. Ohashi of NPERIC, Japan, addressed an issue that he
called an “inconvenient truth”; the efficiency of modern power converters
is approaching 100% and thus the target of power electronics
progress should change from improved converter efficiency to
the overall prevalence of efficient use of energy. To illustrate this,
he introduced the concept of “nega-watt cost” where a “nega-watt”
(negative watt) is a hypothetical unit of energy that is not consumed
either because of efficiency or conservation. The nega-watt cost is
minimized by reducing system and operating cost while maximizing
energy saving and operating time [14].
The 2017 IEDM will be held from December 4-6, 2017 at the Hilton
San Francisco Union Square, San Francisco, CA, USA. Further
details are available from the conference website,
https://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/
conferencedetails/index.html?Conf_ID=19572.
www.ieee.org
References
1.) D. Shibata, et. al., “1.7 kV / 1.0 mΩ-cm2 normally-off vertical GaN transistor
on GaN substrate with regrown p-GaN/AlGaN/GaN semipolar gate structure”,
IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 248-251.
2.) Y. Zhang et. al., “Novel GaN trench MIS barrier Schottky rectifiers with implanted
field rings,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 252-255.
3.) H. Handa et. al. ”High-speed switching and current collapse free operation
by GaN gate injection transistors with thick buffer layer on bulk GaN substrates”,
IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 256-259.
4.) M. Hua, et. al., “Integration of LPCVD-SiNx gate dielectric with recessedgate
E-mode GaN MIS-FETs: toward high performance, high stability and
long TDDB lifetime,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 260-263.
5.) T. Terashima, “Superior performance of SiC power devices and its limitation
by self-heating,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 264-267.
6.) J. Namai, et. al., ”Experimental demonstration of -730V vertical SiC p-MOS-
FET with high short circuit withstand capability for complementary inverter
applications”, IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 272-275.
7.) G. Rescher et. al.,”On the Subthreshold Drain Current Sweep Hysteresis of
4H-SiC nMOSFETs”, IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 276-279.
8.) K. Kakushima et. al., “Experimental Verification of a 3D scaling principle for
low Vce(sat) IGBT”, IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 268-271.
9.) A. Huang, “Wide bandgap (WBG) power devices and their impacts on power
delivery systems,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 528-531.
10.) A. Lidow, “System level impact of GaN power devices in server architectures,”
IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 536-539.
11.) H. Isheda, GaN-based semiconductor devices for future power switching
systems,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 540-543.
12.) G. Deboy et. al., “Si, SiC and GaN power devices: an unbiased view on key
performance indicators,” IEDM Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 532-535.
13.) S. Bahl et.al. “Application reliability validation of GaN power devices”, IEDM
Technical Digest, Dec. 2016, pp. 544-547.
14.) H. Ohashi, “Horizon beyond ideal power devices”, IEDM Technical Digest,
Dec. 2016, pp. 548-551.
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 17

COVER CONTENT STORY
Measurement of Loss in
High-Frequency Reactors
Method for Measuring and Analyzing Reactors (Inductors)
Using a Power Analyzer
By Kazunobu Hayashi, Hioki E.E. Corporation
Introduction
High-frequency reactors are used in a variety
of locations in electric vehicles (EVs) and
hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Examples
include step-up DC/DC converters between
the battery and the inverter and AC/DC converters
in battery charging circuits.
To boost overall system efficiency, it is
necessary to improve the efficiency in each
constituent circuit, and reactors are one
component that is responsible for a large
amount of loss in these circuits. Consequently,
accurate measurement of reactor loss is
an essential task in improving overall system
efficiency. In general, because most of these
reactors are switched on and off at high
frequencies, conventional wisdom holds that
it is difficult to directly measure reactor loss.
In the past, elements such as IGBTs were
used as switching elements, and switching
frequencies were on the order of tens of
kilohertz. In recent years, progress in the
commercialization of SiC and GaN elements
has made possible switching frequencies
greater than 100 kHz, spurring demand for
measuring instruments with high-frequency
bands. This paper describes a method for
measuring reactor loss with a high degree of
precision, with reference to an actual measurement
example.
Reactor loss
Figure 1 illustrates an equivalent circuit for a
reactor, which can be thought of as a circuit
with an inductance component L s connected
in series with the resistance R s , representing
loss.
Figure 1: Equivalent circuit for a reactor
The equivalent circuit’s L s and R s can be
measured using a standard LCR meter. In
such a scenario, the LCR meter will apply a
minuscule sine-wave signal to the measurement
target and measure the impedance. By
contrast, the characteristics of a reactor in an
operating circuit will differ from a measurement
made with an LCR meter for the following
reasons:
• A rectangular-wave voltage will be applied
to the component as a result of the
switching operation. This will cause a
triangular-wave current to flow, with the
result that neither the voltage waveform nor
the current waveform will take the form of a
sine wave.
• Due to the characteristics of the component’s
magnetic core, each parameter will
exhibit level dependence. This dependence
will cause quantities such as L s and R s
during component operation to differ from
the values obtained by measurement with
an LCR meter.
• During use of a DC/DC converter, the
current applied to a reactor will exhibit DC
superposition. The parameters during such
superposition differ due to the magnetic
core’s saturation characteristics.
In short, high-precision measurement of
reactor loss and parameters must be carried
out not with an LCR meter, but rather while
the component is in an operating state.
Method for measuring reactor loss
Figure 2 provides a measurement block
diagram during measurement of reactor loss
using a boost chopper circuit as an example.
In this example, a Power Analyzer PW6001
and current sensor are used to make the
measurement, in which the instrument
directly measures the voltage U L and the
current I L that are applied to the reactor and
then calculates the loss. Power as measured
in this setup consists of the total of the power
consumed in the winding and in the core.
In short, the reactor’s overall loss is being
measured.
Accuracy in this measurement can be
increased by keeping the current wiring route
and the connection of the voltage cables to
the power analyzer as short as possible. In
addition, it is necessary to consider the effects
of metallic and magnetic objects in the
vicinity of the reactor. Caution is necessary
as wires and other nearby metallic objects
may affect the operation of the reactor.
Moreover, due to the potential for measurement
to be affected by peripheral noise from
the voltage cables, it is desirable to twist the
cables before measuring.
Figure 2: Measurement of reactor loss in a
boost chopper circuit
When measuring the loss of the core alone
(core loss), the reactor voltage is measured
after wrapping secondary wiring around the
core as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 3: Measurement of core loss
18
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COVER CONTENT STORY
Because core loss is defined as the area
of the B-H loop, the core loss P c per unit of
volume can be calculated as follows, where
T represents the duration of one B-H loop
period:
If the core has a flux path length of l and a
cross-sectional area of A, the relationships
between the primary winding current i and
magnetic field H and that between the secondary
winding voltage v and magnetic flux
density B are as follows:
power measurement standpoint, the measurement
is characterized by a low power
factor. In short, the phase difference between
the voltage and current is close to 90°. As
illustrated in Figure 4, the effect of the phase
error between the instrument’s voltage and
current measurement units on measured
values is greater than when measurement is
carried out with a high power factor. Consequently,
the measurement units must exhibit
a high degree of phase precision.
• High CMRR (80 dB or greater at 100 kHz)
• High noise resistance thanks to a dedicated
current sensor [2][3]
Instrument characteristics required for
reactor loss measurement
Figure 5 illustrates the voltage and current
waveforms that are applied to a reactor in a
circuit such as that shown in Figure 2. The
voltage waveform takes the form of a rectangular
wave, while the current waveform takes
the form of a triangular wave with a superposed
DC component. To measure loss at
a precision of 0.1% with waveforms such as
these requires a band of about 5 to 7 times
the switching frequency[4]. For example,
with a switching frequency of 100 kHz, the
measurement would need to provide a band
of 500 kHz to 700 kHz.
Consequently, the core loss per unit of
volume can be calculated as follows, where
P represents the power calculated from the
primary winding current i and the secondary
winding voltage v.
In addition, since the core’s Volume is given
by lA, the core’s overall core loss P cALL can
be calculated as follows:
Accordingly, by making a measurement with
the setup shown in Figure 3, it is possible to
measure the core loss under actual operating
conditions.
In addition, the Power Analyzer PW6001 can
save 16-bit voltage and current waveform
data sampled 5 MSa/s as CSV files and
transfer data to MATLAB*, allowing the
instrument to generate higher-precision
waveform data than is possible to obtain with
a standard waveform recorder. This data
also can be used for analytical purposes, for
example to render the B-H loop.
*MATLAB is a registered trademark of Mathworks
Inc.
Why is it difficult to measure reactor
loss?
Inductance is the principal component in
determining a reactor’s impedance. From a
Figure 4: Relationship between phase error
and power measurement error
In addition, reactors are switched at frequencies
ranging from tens of kilohertz to
hundreds of kilohertz. As described above,
commercialization of SiC and GaN elements
has resulted in a tendency toward rising
switching frequencies, and it is necessary
to use measuring instruments with high
phase precision at such high frequencies.
Furthermore, when using current sensors, it
is necessary to consider the current sensor’s
phase error.
Moreover, a large common-mode voltage will
be applied to the voltage and current measurement
units during the type of measurement
illustrated in Figure 2. As a result, it is
necessary to use an instrument with a high
common mode rejection ratio (CMRR).
As described above, the components under
measurement are being switched at frequencies
ranging from several tens of kilohertz to
several hundreds of kilohertz, resulting in a
measurement environment that is characterized
by an extremely large amount of noise.
Consequently, it is necessary to use an instrument
that exhibits high noise resistance.
In this way, the conventional wisdom holds
that measuring reactor loss is a difficult
process because it requires an instrument
that exhibits a high level of performance in
numerous areas. These requirements can be
met by using the Power Analyzer PW6001,
which offers the following features:
• Broad band and high-precision phase
characteristics thanks to its current sensor
phase shift function [1]
Figure 5: Reactor voltage and current waveforms
in a boost chopper circuit
It is important to note that high-precision
measurement capability is required not only
for amplitude (gain), but also for the phase
difference between voltage and current. To
measure a high-frequency current in excess
of several amperes, it is necessary to use
a current sensor[2]. Since the current sensor’s
phase error cannot be ignored at high
frequencies, it is necessary to adopt some
sort of correction method. Most other manufacturers’
power analyzers and oscilloscopes
perform this correction using a deskew
function. Depending on the current sensor’s
characteristics, that approach requires using
a different delay time for each measurement
frequency. Consequently, it results in larger
errors when measuring distorted waveforms
such as triangular waveforms that have
frequency components in a broad band. By
using the Power Analyzer PW6001 with a
high-precision current sensor along with the
instrument’s phase shift function and entering
the current sensors’ phase error at just one
point into the PW6001, it is possible to make
measurements with low phase error across a
broad frequency band.
Example of Reactor Measurement with a
Power Analyzer
This section describes an example of reactor
measurement using the Power Analyzer
20
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COVER CONTENT STORY
PW6001 and the Current Box PW9100.
Figure 6 provides a circuit diagram for the
measurement, while Table 1 lists the specifications
of the reactor under measurement.
Measurement was performed while applying
a sine signal with a power amplifier (4055,
NF Corporation).
Figure 6: Measurement block diagram
Table 1 Reactor specifications
Power analyzers are used to measure parameters
such as RMS voltage and current
values as well as phase error and power.
The PW6001 allows operators to combine
these basic measured values in the form of
user-defined calculations that can be carried
out in real time. Reactor parameters can be
measured by setting up the user-defined
calculations listed in Table 2.
Table 2 Configuring user-defined calculations
Figure 7 illustrates the change in the inductance
L S and the resistance R S when the
current level applied to the reactor is varied
at a frequency of 10 kHz, while Figure 8
illustrates the change in the inductance L S
and the resistance R S when the AC current
RMS value is fixed at 0.5 A and the DC bias
current is varied at a frequency of 100 kHz.
Ordinarily, LCR meters can only measure
current on the order of several dozens of
milliamperes. In addition, the range of DC
bias currents that can be generated by LCR
meters’ DC bias units is limited. As a result of
these limitations, measured parameters differ
from the values that characterize actual operating
conditions. As this example demonstrates,
a power analyzer and power source
can be combined to measure a reactor at
current levels that approach actual operating
conditions.
Figure 7: Measurement example illustrating
the level dependence of inductance and
resistance (f = 10 kHz)
This example illustrates use of a power supply
to apply sine-wave current and voltage.
As described above, rectangular-wave voltage
and triangular-wave current are usually
applied to operating reactors, rather than
sine-wave signals. A power analyzer allows
direct measurement of reactors under such
conditions. In addition, parameters such as
L S and R S can be calculated based on the
results of harmonic calculations performed
by the instrument. These instrument characteristics
make possible more accurate
analysis.
Figure 8: Measurement example illustrating
the DC superposition characteristics of
inductance and resistance (f = 100 kHz)
Conclusion
This article introduced a method for
measuring and analyzing high-frequency
reactor loss, with reference to an actual
measurement example. In order to accurately
measure loss and other parameters
of high-frequency reactors, it is necessary
to make measurements under conditions
that approach actual operating conditions. In
addition, this article described the high level
of performance that is required for a power
analyzer used to make such measurements.
Finally, it offered an example in which a
PW6001 Power Analyzer was used to measure
and analyze reactor loss.
References
1. Yoda, H., “Power Analyzer PW6001”,
HIOKI Technical Notes, vol.2, no.1, 2016,
pp.43-49.
2. Yoda, H., H. Kobayashi, and S. Takiguchi,
“Current Measurement Methods that Deliver
High Precision Power Analysis in the
Field of Power Electronics” Bodo’s Power
Systems, April 2016, pp.38-42.
3. Ikeda, K., and H. Masuda, “High-Precision,
Wideband, Highly Stable Current
Sensing Technology” Bodo’s Power
Systems, July 2016, pp.22-28.
4. Hayashi, K, “High-Precision PowerMeasurement
of SiC Inverters” Bodo’s Power
Systems, September 2016, pp.42-47.
www.hioki.com
22
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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CONTENT IGBTS
The Next Generation Bimode
Insulated Gate Transistors Based
on Enhanced Trench Technology
The combined advantages of the low loss Enhanced Trench cell concept and BIGT chip
integration sets a new milestone for delivering higher output power for the next generation
BIGT power modules.
By Munaf Rahimo, Chiara Corvasce, Maxi Andenna, Charalampos Papadopoulos and
Arnost Kopta, ABB Switzerland Ltd, Semiconductors
High voltage IGBTs have undergone major breakthroughs in the past
two decades with respect to their power handling capabilities. Nowadays
the next step to enable higher output power capability for high
voltage devices is following two different development paths. The first
is an IGBT/Diode integration concept by combining both the IGBT and
diode modes of operation in a single chip and hence eliminating the
need for a separate antiparallel diode. This step was realized with the
introduction of the high voltage and hard switched Reverse Conducting
RC-IGBT (or the Bimode Insulated Gate Transistor or BIGT). The
BIGT was based on the Enhanced Planar (EP) MOS cell platform,
called SPT + . The second development path was achieved with the introduction
of an Enhanced Trench (ET) MOS cell or TSPT + to provide
further plasma enhancement (i.e. losses reductions) combined with
improved controllability.
Both the BIGT and ET-IGBT device concepts provided separately
an additional increase in the output power compared to state of the
art HiPak 2 modules with current ratings reaching up to approximately
1800A/3300V and 900A/6500V. The preferred choice of either
approach depends heavily on the application in terms of topology,
switching frequency, gate drive / control adaptations, and diode loading
/ surge current requirements. Figure (1) shows the nominal current
carrying capability increase with each improved IGBT generation for
the reference HiPak 2 modules rated at 3300V, 4500V and 6500V.
In this article, we demonstrate how the next step in device evolution
for targeting even higher current ratings can be achieved by
combining the ET-IGBT MOS cell and the BIGT integration structure.
The reported results offer the possibility to reach another significant
milestone where the current ratings can be doubled to 2400A/3300V
and 1200A/6500V when compared to the first IGBT module products
at these voltage ratings.
THE ENHANCED TRENCH ET-BIGT
The high power performance and advantages of the BIGT concept
based on the EP MOS cell technology have been previously reported
for different voltage ratings ranging between 3300V and 6500V. Also
recently, lower losses and higher current ratings were achieved with
an IGBT, which is based on the ET MOS cell technology. Therefore,
it is natural to follow on the next step and provide the combined
advantages of both design concepts by introducing a BIGT based on
the ET MOS cell design. The ET-BIGT structure shown in Figure (2)
Figure 1: High voltage standard HiPak 2 module (140 x 190 mm) current
ratings for 3300V, 4500V and 6500V with different generations of
IGBT technologies
Figure 2: The Enhanced Trench ET-BIGT basic design concept including
the wafer backside design
24
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

CONTENT IGBTS
was designed by employing the previously reported BIGT backside
architecture with respect to the p + pilot IGBT region and the radial
layout p + /n + shorting design for providing a snap-back free on-state
characteristics.
The main focus of the ET-BIGT was to optimize the ET MOS cell for
providing good diode performance. For the targeted performance
gain, it is critical that the diode mode on-state losses of the BIGT
remain relatively low even under positive gate biasing conditions for
ease of control and for maintaining good surge current capability. In
principle, trench cell concepts in an RC-IGBT provide a stronger gate
shorting effect since a planar cell design has a lateral gate and can
still provide relatively high diode hole injection at the centre of the
p-well under the contact. Hence, the introduction of a diode p-type
anode pilot region in the third dimension is necessary to obtain low
conduction losses even under positive gate biasing. Introducing the
diode pilot region in this manner does not adversely affect the ET
cell plasma enhancement for lower losses as far as the dimensions
between the repetitive pilot diode regions are kept large.
For reducing the diode mode reverse recovery losses, the well proven
Local p-well Lifetime (LpL) control region in the emitter p-well is also
included for lowering the injection efficiency in diode mode without
adversely affecting the excess carriers in transistor mode for low conduction
losses. Furthermore, a uniform local lifetime control layer is
introduced across the whole device at a depth beyond the trench bottom
regions as shown in Figure (2). The uniform local lifetime dose is
varied to adjust the recovery losses to the desired target as discussed
in the following section.
different chip designs were dynamically tested under nominal current
and voltage conditions at 150°C, R Gon = R Goff = 33 ohm, C ge = 10nF
and a stray inductance of 2400 nH. The losses technology curves
in both transistor and diode modes are shown in Figures (4) and
(5) respectively. Figure (4) shows that the ET-BIGT uniform lifetime
control results in an increase in the V ce values. Figure (5) shows
that ET-BIGT design (B) matches the diode losses of the EP-BIGT.
Figure 3: ET-BIGT Diode mode reverse recovery current waveforms
at 25°C for different lifetime control steps
THE 3300V ET-BIGT ELECTRICAL PERFORMANCE
The first 3300V/62.5 A ET-BIGT prototype chips were manufactured
and tested. To demonstrate the impact of the different lifetime control
steps, Figure (3) shows the reverse recovery current waveforms
without any lifetime control, with LpL only, and with two doses for the
uniform lifetime control layer (A implant dose < B implant dose).
To assess the full impact of the lifetime control, static and dynamic
electrical characterization was carried out on the new ET-BIGT chips
and compared to reference devices including EP-IGBT, EP-BIGT and
ET-IGBT having a similar active area of approximately 1 cm 2 . The
Figure 4 : 3300V Transistor mode technology curves (V ce vs. E off )
—
Let’s write the future
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IGBT module.
The innovative LinPak concept answers the market’s
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The LinPak low-inductive phase leg IGBT module
is available in 1700 V and 3300 V with current ratings
of 2 × 1000 and 2 × 450 A, respectively.
abb.com/semiconductors
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 25

CONTENT IGBTS
It is important to note that the uniform local lifetime dose of design
(B) is close to half of that of the EP-BIGT due to the lower injection
efficiency of the trench cell when compared to the planar cell. While
the higher EP-BIGT conduction losses results in a chip current rating
of approximately 50 A/cm 2 , the ET-BIGT can be rated at 62.5 A/cm 2
(similar to EP-IGBT). This can then provide the increased module current
ratings as discussed previously.
The ET-BIGT design (B) chips were then employed in a HiPak 1
(130mm x 140mm) to demonstrate the chip capability at module level.
Each module contained 24 chips and was tested with nominal current
(1600A) and voltage (1800V) conditions at 150°C, R Gon = R Goff = 3.3
Ohm, C ge = 330 nF and a stray inductance of 100 nH. The turn-off
waveforms are shown in Figure (8), while in Figure (9) the reverse
recovery performance is demonstrated. The dynamic losses were
recorded having E off = 2.4 J, E on = 3 J, and E rec = 1.9 J.
Figure 5 : 3300V Diode mode technology curves (V F vs. E rr )
Figure 8: 3300V/1600A HiPak 1 ET-BIGT Transistor mode turn-off
waveforms at 150°C
Figure 6: 3300V Transistor mode on-state curves at 25°C and 150°C
Figure 9: 3300V/1600A HiPak 1 ET-BIGT Diode mode reverse recovery
waveforms at 150°C
After nearly two decades of HV-IGBT developments, the ET-BIGT
chip platform has the potential to enable a new milestone by reaching
double the output current carrying capability of HV-IGBT modules
when compared to first generation devices.
www.abb.com/semiconductors
Figure 7: 3300V Diode mode on-state curves at 25°C and 150°C
Figures (6) and (7) show the EP-BIGT and ET-BIGT design (B) static
conduction curves in both IGBT and diode modes respectively. The
diode mode on-state are recorded with an applied gate voltage of
0V and 15V. The impact of the trench cell is clearly visible having a
higher V F with a positive gate emitter bias voltage.
Rahimo M.T., Kopta A, Schlapbach U., Vobecky J., Schnell R.,
Klaka S., “The Bi-mode Insulated Gate Transistor (BIGT) A Potential
Technology for Higher Power Applications,” Proc. Int. Sym. on
Power Semiconductor Devices & IC’s, 2009, Barcelona, Spain, pp
283-286.
Andenna M, Otani Y., Matthias S., Corvasce C., Geissmann S.,
Kopta A., Schnell R., Rahimo M.T., “The Next Generation High
Voltage IGBT Modules utilizing Enhanced-Trench ET-IGBTs and
Field Charge Extraction FCE-Diodes,” European Conference on
Power Electronics and Applications (EPE’14-ECCE), Lappeenranta,
Finland, 2014.
26
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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CONTENT IGBTS
Modern Induction Cooking Demands
Compact and Efficient Solutions
New generation discrete IGBTs offer market
leading price / performance ratio
Discrete IGBTs are the preferred power switch for modern inverter-based induction
cooking products due to their inherent efficiency. As energy costs continue to rise and
consumer demand for ever-smaller cooking solutions increases, IGBT technology has to
evolve to meet these demands.
By Giuseppe DeFalco, Infineon Technologies AG
In this article, Infineon Technologies describes the challenges in this
sector and introduces a new technology that meets the technical and
price challenges of this demanding market.
The basic principle of induction heating was discovered by Michael
Faraday in 1831 and was further developed by Heinrich Lenz. During
their experiments with magnetism and EMF they found that during the
switching of the magnetic fields, heat was generated in the core.
Based upon this basic principle, induction hobs use a magnetic field
to directly heat the cookware and, therefore, the food. The popularity
of this style of cooking is increasing due to it being more energy
efficient than gas hobs as only the cookware is heated. It is also quick
and highly controllable as just the strength of the magnetic field needs
to be changed to alter the level of heat.
Clearly, the selection of the best IGBT solution is critical for induction
cooker designers. In most cases designers will focus on key parameters
such as the maximum collector current (I C ) and the maximum
collector-emitter voltage (V CE ) to ensure that the IGBT is capable of
controlling the required power (often up to 2100 W for induction cooktops)
as well as V CEsat and E off which are critical for the operating
efficiency of the device.
Choosing the optimum topology for the circuit is also important as
the design needs to be simple, reliable and energy efficient. One of
the most popular topologies used in induction cooking is the Single
Ended Parallel Resonant Inverter (SEPR), despite its relatively limited
power level.
The same induction technology is now being used in rice cookers
where it allows for a better spread of heat than a standard heating
element as well as instantaneous and precise temperature changes.
A key benefit of induction-based cooking is that the cooking surface is
fully sealed and therefore easier to clean, making the cooking process
more hygenic than other methods.
As induction cooking devices become more popular, then consumer
expectations increase, leading to greater challenges for designers.
Efficiency is a key concern of many consumers, driven by rising
energy costs worldwide and by the increased regulations strictness.
Designers also have to be concerned with safety and reliability, ensuring
that a product does not fail leaving the consumer with no means
of cooking and damaging the supplier’s reputation.
In order to differentiate their product portfolio, many manufacturers
are offering advanced features such as enabling Wi-Fi control. While
consumers assess these additional features, value and price are
increasingly important criteria for selecting an induction-based cooking
device.
At the heart of the induction cooker is an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor
(IGBT) controlling the key power switching function. Therefore,
the IGBT is a key factor in the efficiency, size, reliability and cost of
the end product.
Figure 1: The quasi-resonant single switch Inverter is commonly used
in induction cooking applications
The topology consists primarily of a parallel inductor and capacitor
resonant tank network along with a combined IGBT and diode and a
small capacitor which improves EMI performance and, together with
the diode, provides a path for the inductor’s resonant current flow. The
inverter is generally powered by a mains line voltage that is rectified
but not significantly filtered, thus achieving close to unity power factor
correction.
Typical operating frequencies are in the range of 20 to 60 kHz,
thus avoiding the audible range entirely. The switching frequency
is controlled, with soft-start operating at the higher frequencies and
maximum power being delivered towards the lower part of the range.
In general, the needs of induction cooking applications are simpler
28
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

CONTENT IGBTS
than motor drives as there is no need for hard switching capability,
high short circuit ratings or special package types.
Soft-switching topologies significantly reduce the switching losses of
the IGBT through the use of zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) or zerocurrent-switching
(ZCS) modes of operation. As dynamic losses are
almost negligible, the overall system efficiency is improved.
As the RC-E series is packaged in the industry-standard TO-247
package replacement or upgrading of existing designs is very simple,
allowing designers to improve specifications and costs of existing
products with minimum effort and design risk.
The RC-E series
One of the latest reverse conducting IGBT devices to reach the
market is the RC-E series from power semiconductor device manufacturer,
Infineon Technologies AG. Based on the same applicationspecific
technology as the leading discrete IGBT family (RC-H), the
RC-E series is cost- and feature-optimized for resonant applications
including low / mid-range induction cookers.
Infineon currently offer two devices in the RC-E series, the 15 A, 1200
V IHW15N120E1 and the 25 A, 1200 V IHW25N120E1. Similar to
other reverse-conducting IGBTs from Infineon, the RC-E incorporates
a monolithically-integrated reverse conduction free-wheeling diode
within the IGBT itself, thus eliminating the need for an separate diode
(usually co-packed with the IGBT) in soft-switching applications, making
the RC-E series very easy to use.
Combining a fieldstop layer with the trench gate structure, the RC-E
has a much improved saturation voltage and consumes very little
Figure 3: IGBT power losses - IHW15N120E1 versus competitors
Outoutpower = 2.1kW, T C = 25°C
The complete range of discrete IGBTs for induction cooking comprises
several series. The RC-H5 is ideal for high frequency range (>30
kHz) and offers the lowest losses for the highest efficiency.
While no driver IC is required in many induction cooking applications,
the RC-E is ideally paired with the IRS44273L when a driver is
required. The low voltage non-inverting gate driver features a current
buffer stage and supports both MOSFETs and IGBTs. The monolithic
construction is enabled by latch-immune CMOS technologies and
driver inputs are compatible with either CMOS or LSTTL logic levels.
Figure 2: The RC-E reverse conducting IGBT includes an integrated
free-wheeling diode
energy at turn-off. The thinner substrates increase the conduction and
switching performance over earlier NPT technology. When compared
with co-packed diode solutions, the RC-E offers improved power density
and, since the diode and IGBT use the same die area, the diode
is rated at the full nominal current.
With low E off , V F , R th and V ce(sat) , the RC-E is optimized for low
switching and conduction losses, thus offering very similar performance
to the market leader RC-H3 across a wide power range. The
devices support the most common blocking voltage (1200 V) and are
optimized for switching frequencies in the range of 18 to 40 kHz.
The power losses of the RC-E family are market-leading and, as
shown above, substantially better than competitive devices. This
lower loss level allows designers to easily achieve the key goals for
induction cooking applications.
Figure 4: The RC-E is packaged in the popular TO-247 package allowing
easy replacement or upgrading
The E1 (RC-E) offers the best price / performance ratio of all devices.
The 15 A version is ideal for lower power designs up to 1800 W. The
RC-E is the ideal choice when price and performance are the key factors
for the end product.
www.infineon.com
The lower losses mean that less energy is consumed while cooking,
leading to lower operating costs for consumers. With less waste heat,
the RC-E will run cooler, leading to greater reliability. As less cooling
is required for a given power level, end products immediately become
smaller as heatsinks reduce in size and, therefore, cost. In addition
this contributes to better efficiency and increased lifetime of the IGBT.
30
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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IGBT CONTENT MODULES
LV100 - a Dual Power Module
for the Next Generation Railway
Inverters
This article is dealing with a new standard dual module package specially developed for
High Voltage IGBTs HVIGBTs used in railway applications. The product got the name
“LV100” due to its insulation voltage Viso=6kV AC and the package width of 100mm. The
derivate power module named “HV100” has higher insulation capability of Viso=10.4kV
AC. Both siblings have a footprint of 100mm x 140mm.
By Eugen Stumpf and Eugen Wiesner, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC Europe, and Kenji Hatori,
Hitoshi Uemura and Shinichi Iura, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC Japan.
The power module topology is half bridge. The main intention for
creating such dual power module is reducing the module’s internal
stray inductance. In order to minimize the internal voltage spike – one
of the bottlenecks for keeping the RBSOA at maximum inverter output
current. Each new chip generation shows increased current switching
slope di/dt causing higher overvoltage spikes inside the package if the
power module’s stray inductance would be kept constant. The issue
becomes even more challenging when wide band gap semiconductors
are used, because the switching speed can be increased by a
factor of ten compared to today’s Si-IGBTs. As first step MITSUBISHI
ELECTRIC is going to introduce power modules in LV100 package
with Si- and SiC- chips having a blocking voltage capability of 3300V.
As second step the LV100 package will be applied to 1700V chips.
train Shinkansen [5]. The chips uses SCC technology for further
decreasing the humidity impact on reliability [6]. The innovative baseplate
design is focusing on increasing the life time expectation and
reducing thermal stress on semiconductors [7].
General advantages of the new package design
The general motivation for developing of LV100 was strong requirements
from European Market for propulsion inverters which were
concluded in the deliverables of Roll2Rail community [1]. Besides decreasing
the stray inductance the scalability is on focus of requested
features. The decrease of stray inductance to 10nH is forced by the
continuous increase of switching speed and introduction of wide band
gap semiconductor materials. The scalability is a feature simplifying
logistic, costs and availability of propulsion inverter.
Mitsubishi Electric uses the possibility of setting new standard traction
power module by introducing of superior and proved technologies.
The output power corresponded to the output current is going to be
increased by introducing of next chip generation and semiconductor
materials. One of the bottlenecks for increasing the output power
is not related to semiconductor performance, it is about the current
handling capability of main terminals [2]. This technology evolution is
respected by designing three paralleled AC power terminals in LV100-
package instead of two as proposed by other dual module concepts
(see Fig.1). The design of auxiliary terminal arrangement satisfies the
pollution degree 3 requirements [3]. The height of auxiliary terminals
is 5mm in order to use double-layer PCB for gate driver. The chip set
used in the Si-based LV100 module is belonging to the X-series [4]
[15], and corresponds to the latest 7th generation Si-chip technology.
The chip set used in the SiC-based LV100 module was already
proved in the field operation test, in the famous Japanese high speed
Figure 1: The housing of LV100 power module
Baseplate
Special attention was paid on innovation provided by advanced baseplate.
For the first time the material of baseplate will be not based
on metal matrix composite AlSiC, the used standard material today
for railway application. Mitsubishi Electric is going to introduce Al
with following advantages vs. AlSiC. The advantage of Al is thermal
resistance which is lower vs. AlSiC [8, 9]. Additionally the weight of Al
baseplate is lower forwarding the advantages to the railway equipment,
increasing indirectly energy efficiency.
Historically Mitsubishi Electric uses AlN as insulating ceramic layer in
power modules. This material provides 7 times higher thermal conductivity
compared to the second popular insulation material Al2O3.
The using of Al was inhibited in the past by mismatching of thermal
expansion coefficients CET. Due to this mismatch the solder layer
between baseplate and ceramic insulator is stressed under cyclic
load conditions and limits the lifetime of power module. In LV100 this
32
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

IGBT CONTENT MODULES
bottle neck, the solder between ceramic and baseplate, is completely
eliminated by newly available Metal Casting direct Bonding MCB
technology [7]. The thermal stability of Al baseplate is additionally
supported by AlN strips implemented into the baseplate. This proven
technology was applied for the first time to high power semiconductor
modules about 7 years ago, when Mitsubishi Electric started the
manufacturing of Mega Power Dual Modules CM1800DY-34S and
CM2500DY-24S. Besides the drastically increased thermal cycling
capability the elimination of substrate solder layer provides the additional
effect of reduced thermal resistance Rth(j-c) by approximately
25%.
In high power modules with conventionally soldered ceramic substrates
the reachable power chip density is limited by the insulation
material geometry. The new MCB baseplate structure is removing this
limitation and allows to enlarge the insulation surface and to optimize
the chips location.
Finally MCB and Al material allow an improved baseplate flatness
control. The baseplate flatness is reduced to 33um which contributes
to the reducing of thermal grease thickness. The total advantage of
improved baseplate results in a reduced contact thermal resistance
between baseplate and heat sink by 30% [7].
As summary the advanced baseplate reduces the weight, increases
the output power and increases the life time capability of LV100 power
module.
previous chip generation was showing at Tj=125°C. The implemented
chip structure is given in Figure 4. The additional effect of advanced
gettering process is significantly increasing of cosmic ray withstand
capability [10]. The Long Term DC Stability LTDS affected by cosmic
ray becomes nowadays one of the key criteria for selecting the appropriate
power semiconductor for railway applications. Special engineering
focus was done on humidity resistance due to increased awareness
of Roll2Rail and power electronics communities on reliability
impact of environmental conditions [11][14]. The introduced Surface
Charge Control SCC technology prevents formation and polarization
of outer surface charges QSS [6] that may disturb the electrical field
distribution in the chip’s guard ring area.
Figure 4: Chip structure
Switching Performance
The standard switching tests of CM450DA-66X are performed under
consideration of rated values and two different junction temperatures.
The results are shown in figures 8 and 9. The contribution of low
stray inductance is visible. The di/dt and dv/dt values are indicated in
order to estimate the EMC level. The well balanced triangle trade-off
between switching loss, static loss and short circuit robustness of new
X-series IGBT-chip was described already in the December 2016 edition
of this journal [12].
Figure 2: The MCB baseplate with flatness reduced to 33um
Figure 5: Motor acceleration mode with power factor 0.9
Figure 3: Improved baseplate results in a reduced contact thermal
resistance
X-Series chip set
The X-series chip set was developed by Mitsubishi Electric in order to
satisfy the current and future market requirements for high efficiency,
high junction and operation temperatures, increased rated current, increased
RBSOA, RRSOA, SCSOA and improved robustness against
humidity.
The efficiency is increased by introduction of trench-gate structure.
The increasing of operation temperature is achieved by optimization
of N buffer layer and by gettering [4]. With these methods the leakage
current at Tj=150°C is low and does not exceed the values that the
Figure 6: Braking mode with negative power factor of -0.9
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 33

IGBT CONTENT MODULES
Performance under different application conditions
The performance of CM450DA-66X, the Si based LV100 power
module 450A/3300V is presented in figures 5 and6. The X-axis represents
the inverter output AC current, the Y-axis represents the PWM
switching frequency. The power loss of the module is assumed to be
Pv=750W, the value is comfortable for air forced cooling. For liquid
cooling systems the above loss figure can be simply doubled. Figure
5 shows the motor acceleration mode with power factor 0.9 and figure
6 shows the braking mode with negative power factor of -0.9. The
figures shows similar output power capability in both operation modes
which corresponds to the modern railway requirements to acceleration
or regenerative energy. The using of braking regenerative energy
helps to reduce railway energy consumption. The railway energy
saving is one of activities of Mitsubishi Electric keep our tomorrow
green [13].
Figure 7: Performance comparison of three types power modules in
the same LV100 package
Comparison of Si vs SiC
The tribute to the future, to the use of SiC in next generation power
electronic systems, is paid in figure 7. This figure shows a performance
comparison of three types power modules in the same LV100
package: (1) Si based (2) Si IGBT and SiC diode hybrid (3) SiC
based. The comparison is based on the same application conditions:
Vcc=1800V; Ic=450A; fc=0.5kHz, PF=0.85. The Full SiC power module
allows to reduce power loss of a module by half compared with
Si. Or, taking the advantage of having 3 AC terminals in the LV100
package, the inverter output current could be doubled. The SiC power
modules contributes to increasing of switching frequency, to reducing
of propulsion motor loss, to increase of power density (compactness)
of traction inverters, to increasing of total traction efficiency, to
decreasing of Energy Consumption Index ECI.
www.mitsubishielectric.com
Eugen Stumpf and Eugen Wiesner, MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC Europe,
Mitsubishi Electric Platz 1, 40880 Ratingen, Germany
Kenji Hatori, Hitoshi Uemura and Shinichi Iura, MITSUBISHI
ELECTRIC, Power Device Works, 1-1-1 Imajukuhigashi Nishi-Ku,
Fukuoka, Japan.
Reference
[1] http://www.roll2rail.eu/
[2] Krafft et al., “A New Standard IGBT Housing for High-Power
Converters”. EPE 2015, Geneva, Switzerland
[3] EN50124. “Railway applications Insulation Coordination”. European
Standard, April 2006
[4] Tanaka et al., “Durable Design of the New HVIGBT modules”.
PCIM 2016, Nuremberg
[5] Mitsubishi Electric Press Release 2942. “Mitsubishi Electric
Installs Railcar Traction System with All-SiC Power Modules on
Shinkansen Bullet Trains”. June 25, 2015, Tokyo
[6] Honda et al., “High Voltage Device Edge Termination for Wide
Temperature Range plus Humidity with Surface Charge Control
(SCC) Technology”. Proc. ISPSD 2016, Prague, Czech Republic
[7] Sakai et al., “Power Cycling Time improvement by reducing thermal
stress of a new dual HVIGBT module”. EPE 2017, Karlsruhe, 2016
[8] D.D.L Chung. “Materials for Thermal Conductions”. Applied Thermal
Engineering 21, pages 1593-1605, 2001
[9] Jiang et al., “Advanced Thermal Management Material”. Chapter
8. Springer, New-York, 2013
[10] Uemura et al., “Optimized Design against Cosmic Ray Failure
for HVIGBT Modules”. Proc. PCIM Europe 2011, pages 26-31,
Nuremberg, Germany
[11] C. Zorn, N. Kaminski “Temperature Humidity Bias (THB) Testing
on IGBT Module at High Bias Levels”, CIPS2014, Germany,
ISBN 978-3-8007-3578-5, 2014
[12] Wiesner et al., “Line Up Expansion of X-Series High Voltage
IGBT Modules in the 3300V Class”. Bodos Power Systems,
December 2016, pages 36-37. bodospower.com
[13] Mitsubishi Electric press release 2732. “Mitsubishi Electric Develops
Regenerative Power Optimization Technology for Railway
Energy Saving”. February 2013, Tokyo
[14] N. Tanaka, K. Ota, S. Iura, Y. Kusakabe, K. Nakamura, E.
Wiesner, E. Thal “Robust HVIGBT module design against high
humidity”, PCIM Europe2015, Germany, p. 368-373, 2015
[15] K. Hatori at al., “Wide Temperature Operation of high isolation
HVIGBT”. Proc. PCIM Europe 2010, pages 470-475, Nuremberg,
Germany
Figure 8: Turn on losses
Figure 9: Turn off losses
34
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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amplifier. The onboard firmware supports user-defined, multi-pulse waveforms
required for industrial inkjet printing applications. The MP113 solves the
challenges of generating precisely timed, nozzle head data streams, and
high fidelity fire pulses when driving a changing number of print nozzles. This
comprehensive solution incorporates the digital control and system interface
with a dual power amplifier rated at >10A PEAK per channel, 180V supply
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The Apex Microtechnology logo is a trademark of Apex Microtechnology, Inc. BPS0112016

POWER CONTENT MODULES
Three-Level Topology for Single-
Phase Solar Applications
Three-level topologies’ enticing benefits are twofold: high efficiency and reduced filtering
effort. Several multi-level topologies for single-phase solar applications are already on
the market. This article presents a new alternative, H6.5, briefly discusses operating
principles, and benchmarks H-bridge, H6.5 and HERIC ® topologies for efficiency and
cost. In closing, it briefly describes the features of the new flowPACK 1 H6.5 modules.
By Baran Özbakir, Vincotech GmbH, Biberger Str. 93, 82008 Unterhaching, Germany
Active power (1)
The Idea Behind Three-level Topology
The sinusoidal output current generated
by solar inverters is fed to the grid, where
H-bridge topology with PWM (pulse width
modulation) and an output filter produce sinusoidal
output current. The main drawback
of this two-level operation is that it requires
a relatively large output filter and regenerates
energy back to the DC capacitor during
freewheeling. This regenerated energy flows
to the inverter twice, which takes a toll on
efficiency. Three-level topologies such as
H6.5, in contrast, reduce filtering effort and
switching losses. Fig.1 illustrates the idea
behind this three-level operation. T11 and
T14 switch on and energy flows to the output
at active power. Energy then flows back
to the DC capacitor through D13 and D12
during freewheeling, which compounds the
losses within the system. Three-level topologies
such as H6.5 and HERIC ® uncouple the
DC link capacitor from the AC output in the
freewheeling phase to reduce overall losses.
H6.5 Operating Principles and Topology
Benchmarking
Figure 2 shows the innovative new H6.5
topology and figure 3 shows the HERIC ®
topology.
H6.5 The benefits, drawbacks and constrains
of the two topologies at a glance:
Benefits:
• Low static losses in the 3rd level operation:
• Voltage drop at real power: 2 IGBTs
• Voltage drop at freewheeling: 1 IGBT + 1
diode
• Voltage drop at reactive power: 3 diodes
• May also be used bidirectionally
Drawbacks:
• Complex structure: 6 IGBTs (4 ultra fast
switching) and 5 fast diodes required
• Voltage drop at reactive power: 3 diodes
(1 diode drop more)
HERIC ®
Benefits:
• Low static losses in the 3rd level operation
• Voltage drop at real power: 2 IGBTs
• Voltage drop at freewheeling: 1 IGBT + 1
diode
• May also be used bidirectionally
Drawback:
• Complex structure: 6 IGBTs (4 ultrafast
switching) and 6 fast diodes required
Freewheeling (2)
Figure 2: H6.5 Operating Principles (10)
Constraint:
• Patented topology
Figures 4 and 5 depict H6.5 and HERIC ®
topologies’ operating principles with positive
half-waves.
V inDC
V outRMS
I outnominal
400 V
230 V
22.5 A
Table 1: Simulation conditions
Three levels during freewheeling (3)
Figure 1: The idea behind three-level operation
Figure 3: HERIC ® topology (11)
36
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

CONTENT
Active power (4)
Active power (7)
SOLID, SAFE
& SLIM
Din Rail Power Supplies
for Industrial Automation
Freewheeling (5)
Reactive power (6)
Figure 4: The operating principle of H6.5
Freewheeling (8)
Reactive power (9)
Figure 5: The operating principle of HERIC ®
We benchmarked H6.5, HERIC ® and H- topologies’ efficiency under nominal operating
conditions. H6.5 and HERIC ® clearly
bridge topologies’ cost and efficiency to allow
for meaningful comparison and assessment, exhibit the same performance at a power
and included H-bridge topology to outline the factor of 1. Efficiency diverges by no more
3.3differences Benchmarking between two-level at and Nominal threelevel
topologies. Our efficiency calculation lower cost compensates for this gap because
Loadthan 0.02% at a power factor of 0.8, but the
The charts in figures 6 and 7 compare the topologies' efficiency under nominal operating
examined nominal and partial load scenarios H6.5 requires one less diode than HERIC ® .
conditions. H6.5 and HERIC ® clearly exhibit the same performance at a power factor of 1.
Efficiency at the power diverges factors by 1 no and more 0.8. than 0.02% at a power The minimum factor of efficiency 0.8, but the gap lower between cost H6.5
compensates for this gap because H6.5 requires one topology less diode and the than H-bridge HERIC ® is . 0.14% The minimum at 4 kHz.
efficiency Benchmarking gap between at Nominal H6.5 topology Load and the H-bridge The gap is 0.14% widens at as 4 the kHz. switching The gap frequency widens as
the The switching charts in frequency figures 6 increases. and 7 compare the increases.
Efficiency (%)
99,00
98,50
98,00
97,50
97,00
I out :22.5 A - pF:1
96,50
4 kHz 8 kHz 12 kHz 20 kHz 32 kHz 4 0kHz 50 kHz
Heric 98,86 98,81 98,77 98,67 98,53 98,43 98,30
H6.5 98,86 98,81 98,77 98,67 98,53 98,43 98,30
H-Bridge 98,73 98,63 98,53 98,34 98,03 97,83 97,56
120W, 240W & 480W modules:
Slim shape / side mount option for
low profi le cabinets
Smart overload protection
Boost power capability 150%
Temperature range -25°C to +60°C
(full load) / +70°C (with derating)
Parallel operation: current sharing
function
Universal input range (85/264VAC) /
active PFC
UL/IEC/EN 60950 certifi ed
- UL 508 listed
5 year warranty
Compact 45W or 60W modules:
Universal input voltage range
ErP compliant (

POWER CONTENT MODIULES
3.3 Benchmarking at Nominal Load
The charts in figures 6 and 7 compare the topologies' efficiency under nominal operating
conditions. H6.5 and HERIC ® clearly exhibit the same performance at a power factor of 1.
Efficiency diverges by no more than 0.02% at a power factor of 0.8, but the lower cost
compensates for this gap because H6.5 requires one less diode than HERIC ® . The minimum
Benchmarking at Partial Load
Partial load efficiency plays a key role in the weighted efficiency
calculation for single-phase solar applications. European standards
I
set out the following formula out :22.5 A - pF:1
for calculating the weighted efficiency of
99,00
a solar inverter:
efficiency gap between H6.5 topology and the H-bridge is 0.14% at 4 kHz. The gap widens as
the switching frequency increases.
Efficiency (%)
98,50
98,00
Euro Efficiency= 0.03xEff5% + 0.06xEff10% + 0.13 xEff20% + 0.1x
97,50
Eff30% +
0.48x Eff50% + 0.2xEff100%.
97,00
96,50
4 kHz 8 kHz 12 kHz 20 kHz 32 kHz 4 0kHz 50 kHz
The California Energy Commission’s weighted efficiency formula for a
Heric 98,86 98,81 98,77 98,67 98,53 98,43 98,30
solar inverter is:
H6.5 98,86 98,81 98,77 98,67 98,53 98,43 98,30
H-Bridge 98,73 98,63 98,53 98,34 98,03 97,83 97,56
CEC Efficiency= 0.04xEff10% + 0.05xEff20% + 0.12xEff30% +
Fig. 6: Nominal load, pF: 1
0.21xEff50% +
0.53 x Eff75% + 0.05xEff100%.
3.4 Benchmarking at Partial Load
Partial load efficiency plays a key role in the weighted efficiency calculation for single-phase
solar applications. European standards set out the following formula for calculating the
weighted efficiency of a solar inverter:
Euro Efficiency= 0.03xEff5% + 0.06xEff10% + 0.13 xEff20% + 0.1x Eff30% +
0.48x Eff50% + 0.2xEff100%.
The California Energy Commission's weighted efficiency formula for a solar inverter is:
CEC Efficiency= 0.04xEff10% + 0.05xEff20% + 0.12xEff30% + 0.21xEff50% +
0.53 x Eff75% + 0.05xEff100%.
To compare topologies under partial load conditions, we ran simulations at 50% of nominal
load, which has the biggest impact on the weighted efficiency calculation according to
European standards. Figures 8 and 9 compare the topologies' efficiency at 50% of nominal
load. H6.5 and HERIC® clearly exhibit the same performance at a power factor of 1. Efficiency
diverges Figure by 7: no Nominal more than 0.02% load, pF: at a power 0.8 factor of 0.8, but the lower cost compensates for
Fig.7: Nominal load, pF: 0.8
this gap because H6.5 requires one less diode than HERIC®.
To compare topologies under partial load conditions, we ran simulations
at 50% of nominal load, which has the biggest impact on the
weighted efficiency calculation according to European standards.
Figures 8 and 9 compare the topologies’ efficiency at 50% of nominal
load. H6.5 and HERIC ® clearly exhibit the same performance at
a power factor of 1. Efficiency diverges by no more than 0.02% at
a Fig.9: power Partial factor load, of pF: 0.8, but the lower cost compensates for this gap
because H6.5 requires one less diode than HERIC ® .
Benchmarking for Cost
3.5 Benchmarking for Cost
The solar market is price-driven. Even a small change in one component’s
solar price market can have is price-driven. a big impact Even on the a small downstream change in system’s one component's cost. price can
The
impact To get a on better the downstream picture of these system's topologies’ cost. To economics, get a better we picture also benchmarked
their costs. Figure 10 compares their normalized
of these topologie
economics, we also benchmarked their costs. Fig.10 compares their normalized cos
costs.
1,4
1,2
1
0,8
0,6
0,4
0,2
0
Figure10: The cost benchmark
Fig.10: The cost benchmark
Cost benchmark
H-Bridge H6.5 HERIC
Fig. Figure 8: Partial Load, 8: Partial pF:1 Load, pF:1
Page 4 of 7
H-bridge topology requires just four IGBTs and four diodes, so it is,
as expected, at the bottom of the price scale. HERIC® has one diode
more for a total of twelve components and costs around 5% more
than H6.5, which has eleven components. Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
holds the patent on HERIC®, so royalties also have to be taken into
account. This cost benchmark is meaningful for frequencies up to 20
KH z . Particularly in the H-bridge’s case, it would take a bigger, costlier
chipset to solve the problem of sharply increasing losses at higher
frequencies.
Figure 9: Partial load, pF: 0.8
Fig.9: Partial load, pF: 0.8
3.5 Benchmarking for Cost
Page 5 of 7
The solar market is price-driven. Even a small change in one component's price can have a big
impact on the downstream system's cost. To get a better picture of these topologies'
economics, we also benchmarked their costs. Fig.10 compares their normalized costs.
Conclusion
The H6.5, a new three-level topology for single-phase solar inverters,
is a viable alternative to solutions such as HERIC ® . This new topology
is suitable for real power and reactive power modes. The Vincotech
flowPACK 1 H6.5 features this topology. It comes in 50 A, 75 A and
100 A versions with an IGBT S5 chipset in a flow1 housing.
www.vincotech.com
HERIC ® is a registered trademark of Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur
Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
38
1,4
1,2
1
0,8
0,6
0,4
0,2
0
Cost benchmark
Bodo´s Power Systems ® H-Bridge H6.5 HERIC
February 2017 www.bodospower.com
Fig.10: The cost benchmark

LIGHTING
CONTENT
LED Dimming Engine: An 8-bit
MCU-based solution for a Switched-
Mode Dimmable LED driver
Switched-mode dimmable LED drivers are known for their efficiency and precise control
of LED current. They can also provide dimming functionality which allows the end user to
create fantastic lighting effects while reducing their power consumption.
By Mark Pallones, Principal Applications Engineer, Microchip Technology Inc.
An 8-bit microcontroller (MCU) implementation can provide the necessary
building blocks to create solutions that enable communications,
customizations and intelligent control. Additionally, core independent
peripheral integration provides significant flexibility versus that of pure
analog or ASIC implementation and enables innovation that expands
lighting product capabilities and provides product differentiation.
Features such as predictive failure and maintenance, energy monitoring,
color and temperature maintenance and remote communications
and control, are just some of the advanced capabilities that can make
intelligent lighting solutions even more attractive.
Although LED drivers offer many advantages over previous lighting
solutions, there are also challenges in their implementation. But fear
not, by the end of this article you’ll learn how an 8-bit MCU can be
used to alleviate design challenges and create high-performance
switched-mode LED driving solutions with capabilities beyond that of
traditional solutions.
An 8-bit microcontroller can be used to independently control up to
four LED channels which is something most off-the-shelf LED driver
controllers cannot provide. In Figure 1, the LED dimming engines can
be created out of the peripherals available in the microcontroller. Each
of these engines has an independent closed channel that can control
the switched-mode power converter with minimal to no central processing
unit (CPU) intervention. This leaves the CPU free to perform
other important tasks such as supervisory functions, communications
or added intelligence in the system.
LED Dimming Engine
In Figure 2, the LED driver, which is based on the Current-Mode
Boost converter, is controlled by the LED dimming engine. The engine
is mainly composed of core independent peripherals (CIP) such as
complementary output generator (COG), digital signal modulator
(DSM), comparator, programmable ramp generator (PRG), op amp
(OPA), and pulse-width modulator 3 (PWM3). Combining these CIPs
with other on-chip peripherals, such as fixed-voltage regulators (FVR),
digital-to-analog converters (DAC) and Capture/Compare/PWM
(CCP), completes the whole engine. The COG provided the high
frequency switching pulse to MOSFET Q1 to allow the transfer of energy
and supply current to the LED string. The switching period of the
COG output is set by the CCP and the duty cycle, which maintains the
LED constant current and is dictated by the comparator output. The
comparator produces an output pulse whenever the voltage across
Rsense1 exceeds the output of PRG module. The PRG, whose input
is derived from OPA output in the feedback circuit, is configured as a
slope compensator to counteract the effect of inherent subharmonic
oscillation when the duty cycle is greater than 50%.
The OPA module is implemented as an error amplifier (EA) with a
Type II compensator configuration. The FVR is used as the DAC input
to provide voltage reference to the OPA non-inverting input based on
the LED constant current specification.
In order to achieve dimming, the PWM3 is used as a modulator of the
CCP output while driving the MOSFET Q2 to rapidly cycle the LED
ON and OFF. The modulation is made possible through the DSM
module and the modulated output signal is fed to the COG. PWM3
provides pulse with variable duty cycle which controls the average
current of the driver and in effect controls the brightness of the LED.
Figure 1: Diagram of four LED strings being controlled by a Microchip
PIC16F1779 8-bit microcontroller
The LED dimming engine can not only accomplish what the typical
LED driver controller does but it also has features that solve the typical
problems that an LED driver poses. We’ll now walk through these
problems and how a LED dimming engine can be used to avoid them.
40
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

LIGHTING
CONTENT
Flickering
Flickering is one of the challenges that typical switched-mode dimmable
LED drivers may have. While flickering can be a fun effect
when it’s intentional, when LEDs inadvertently flicker it can ruin the
user’s desired lighting design. In order to avoid flickering and provide
a smooth dimming experience, the driver should perform the dimming
step from 100% light output all the way down to its low-end light level
with a continuously fluid effect. Since the LED responds instantaneously
to current changes and doesn’t have a dampening effect, the
driver must have enough dimming steps so the eye does not perceive
the changes. To meet this requirement, the LED dimming engine
employs PWM3 for controlling the dimming of the LED. The PWM3 is
a 16-bit resolution PWM that has 65536 steps from 100% to 0% duty
cycle, ensuring a smooth lighting-level transition.
typical PWM LED dimming waveform. When the LED is off, the LED
current gradually diminishes due the slow discharge of the output
capacitor. This event can lead to color temperature shifting and higher
power dissipation of the LED.
LED Color Temperature Shifting
The LED driver can also shift the LED’s color temperature. Such color
change can be noticeable to the consumer and weaken claims made
about the high-quality lighting experience of LEDs. Figure 3 shows a
Figure 3: LED dimming waveform
The slow discharging of the output capacitor can be eliminated by
using a load switch. For example, in Figure 2, the circuit used Q2 as
a load switch and the LED dimming engine synchronously turns off
the COG PWM output and Q2 in order to cut the path of the decaying
current and allow the LED to turn off quickly.
Figure 2: LED dimming engine
Current Peaking
When using a switched-mode power converter for driving the LED, the
feedback circuit is employed to regulate the LED current. However,
during dimming, the feedback circuit can create current peaking (see
Figure 3) when the operation is not handled properly. Looking back
at Figure 2, when the LED is on, a current is delivered to the LED
and the voltage across RSENSE2 is fed to the EA. When the LED
turns off, no current is delivered to the LED and RSENSE2 voltage
becomes zero. During this dimming off-time, EA output increases to
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 41

LIGHTING
CONTENT
its maximum and overcharges the EA compensation network. When
the modulated PWM turns on again, it takes several cycles before it
recovers while high-peak current is driven to the LED. This current
peaking scenario shortens the lifetime of the LED.
To avoid this problem, the LED dimming engine allows the PWM3 to
be used as an override source of the OPA. When the PWM3 is low,
the output of the EA is tristate which completely disconnects the compensation
network from the feedback loop and holds the last point of
the stable feedback as a charge stored in the compensation capacitor.
When the PWM3 is high and the LED turns on again, the compensator
network reconnects and the EA output voltage immediately jumps
to its previously stable state (before PWM3 is low) and restores the
LED current set value almost instantly.
Complete Solution
As mentioned earlier, a LED dimming engine can operate with minimal
to no CPU intervention. Therefore, while offloading all of the work
for controlling the LED driver to the CIPs, the CPU has significant
bandwidth to execute other important tasks. Protection features, such
as undervoltage lockout (UVLO), overvoltage lockout (OVLO) and
output overvoltage protection (OOVP) can be executed by processing
the sensed input and output voltage. This ensures that the LED driver
is operating within desired specifications and the LED is protected
from abnormal input and output conditions. The CPU can also process
the thermal data from a sensor to implement a LED’s thermal
management. Moreover, when setting the dimming level of the LED
driver, the CPU can process triggers from a simple external switch or
command from a serial communication. Also, the parameters of LED
driver can be sent to external devices through the serial communication
for monitoring or testing.
Aside from the features mentioned above, the designer has the luxury
to add more intelligence on their own LED application inclusive of
communications, like DALI or DMX, and control customizations. Figure
4 shows an example of a complete switched-mode dimmable LED
driver solution using the LED dimming engine.
Conclusion
A LED dimming engine can be used to create an effective switchedmode
dimmable LED driver. The effectivity equates on its capabilities
to drive multiple LED strings, to provide efficient energy source,
to ensure LED’s optimal performance, to maintain a long life for the
LEDs and to add intelligence in the system.
Anz_ITPR_3_Blau.qxp 17.07.2009 17:00 Seite 1
Figure 4: Switched-mode dimmable LED driver solution
www.microchip.com
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CONTENT OPTO
GaN Transistor Gate
Drive Optocouplers
Gallium Nitride (GaN) power semiconductors are rapidly emerging into the commercial
market delivering several benefits over conventional Silicon-based power semiconductors.
GaN can improve overall system efficiency and the higher switching capability can reduce
the overall system size and costs. The technical benefits coupled with lower costs have
increased the fast adoption of GaN power semiconductors in applications like industrial
power supplies and renewable energy inverters.
By Robinson Law, Applications Engineer and Chun Keong Tee, Product Manager,
Broadcom Limited
Broadcom Limited (formerly Avago Technologies) gate drive optocouplers
are used extensively in driving Silicon-based semiconductors
like IGBT and Power MOSFETs. Optocouplers are used to provide reinforced
galvanic insulation between the control circuits and the high
voltages. The ability to reject high common mode noise will prevent
erroneous driving of the power semiconductors during high frequency
switching. This paper will discuss how the next generation of gate
drive optocouplers can be used to protect and drive GaN devices.
Advantages of GaN
Gallium Nitride is a wide bandgap (3.4 eV) compound made up
of Gallium and Nitrogen. Bandgap is a region formed at the junction
of materials where no electron exists. Wide bandgap GaN has high
breakdown voltage and low conduction resistance characteristics.
Unlike conventional Si transistor that requires bigger chip area to
reduce on-resistance, GaN device is smaller in size. This reduces the
parasitic capacitance which allows high speed switching and miniaturization
with ease. The low conduction resistance is achieved because
the on-resistance of the power semiconductor is inversely proportional
to the cube of the electrical breakdown. In other words, it is expected
that GaN device will have an on-resistance approximately 3 digits
lower than the limit of that of Si device. In addition, GaN device has
high electron saturation velocity that makes it suitable for high-speed
applications.
Most of the GaN devices are however normally on which means
the source and drain are conducting when no voltage is applied at
the gate. To stop the conduction, a negative voltage must be used
to reverse the conduction channel. A normally on transistor poses
danger to the system if the gate is not controlled properly and silicon
transistor which is normally off is more suitable for hazardous high
voltage application.
To speed up GaN adoption, Panasonic‘s X-GaN TM developed a
normally off structure by using P type GaN gate and diffuse AlGaN
channel under the gate. At the same time, the P type GaN add holes
near the drain which recombines with the electrons at high voltage.
This method solves current collapse problem whereby electrons
trapped near the channel during high voltage increases the transistor
on-resistance. If the increase of on-resistance is not controlled,
the GaN device will overheat and destroy over time. Panasonic GaN
transistors are capable of no current collapse for up to 850V.
Figure 1: Silicon vs. GaN transistor structure and size
Power semiconductor is the key device and works on tremendous
amount of power during electrical energy conversion. It is therefore
important to optimize the efficiency of this device to minimize
energy loss during their operation. GaN is the next generation power
semiconductor able to minimize power loss with the following characteristics:
miniaturization, high breakdown voltage and high-speed
switching.
Figure 2: Panasonic X-GaNTM transistor structure
Panasonic has done a concept demo of the world’s most compact
400W power supply. The power conversion stages, PFC and LLC
operate at 100 kHz and 280 kHz respectively. The high frequencies
reduce the cost and size of the power supply by more than 30%. The
miniaturized power supply is measured 11.2cm x 4.95cm x 3.95cm
and with effective power density of 1.83W/cm3. It also achieved a
high conversion efficiency of 94% with the low switching and conduction
losses.
44
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CONTENT OPTO
GaN Market and Adoption
GaN technology is now widely recognized as a reliable alternative
to silicon. Recent financial investments into GaN startups like GaN
Systems and Transphorm and corporate partnership between Infineon
and Panasonic indicate market confidence in GaN devices. GaN has
huge Total Accessible Market (TAM) like PF, EV/HEV and PV inverter
is one of the earliest adopters of GaN. In 2014, Yaskawa Electric
Corp launched the world’s first PV inverter using a GaN-based power
semiconductor. The PV inverter has the ability to operate without cooling
fans, is 60% the volume of competing devices and with an overall
peak efficiency above 98%.
Driving GaN Transistor
Figure 5: ACPL-352J driving circuit for GaN transistor
Figure 5 shows the ACPL-352J gate drive outputs, V OUTP /MClamp
and V OUTN and external resistors and capacitor for switching the GaN
transistor. The full chopper board schematic can be found in figure 11.
Figure 3: Panasonic world’s most compact 400W power supply with
94% conversion efficiency
Broadcom gate drive optocouplers have been used extensively
in driving Silicon-based semiconductors like IGBT. This paper will
discuss how the improvements in the next generation of gate drive
optocouplers can also be used to drive and protect GaN devices.
GaN Transistor and Gate Drive Optocouplers
Broadcom has been working closely with GaN market leader Panasonic,
to determine suitable gate driver for GaN operation. We have
evaluated gate drive optocoupler ACPL-352J with Panasonic GaN
transistor, PGA26E19BA using a 100-150V, 5A chopper board at 100
kHz.
The ACPL-352J is industry’s highest output current, 5A smart gate
drive optocoupler. The high peak output current, together with wide
operating voltage make it ideal for driving GaN transistor directly.
The device features fast propagation delay of 100ns with excellent
timing skew performance and has very high common mode transient
immunity (CMTI) of more than 50kV/μs. It can provide GaN with over
current protection and fail-safe functional safety reporting. This fullfeatured
gate drive optocoupler comes in a compact, surface-mountable
SO-16 package. It provides the reinforced insulation certified by
safety regulatory IEC/EN/DIN, UL and CSA.
Figure 6: GaN transistor gate current and voltage switching waveform
The initial in-rush charging current to turn on the GaN quickly is provided
by ACPL-352J V OUTP and the peak current limited by R9. C16
is used to turn on the GaN faster by hard charging current momentarily.
The required I G_CHARGE can be calculated by the GaN’s Q g and
turn on time Δt, for example 10ns.
I G_CHARGE = Q g / Δt = 4.5nC / 10ns = 450mA (1)
The value of R9 can then be calculated by the gate drive supply,
V CC , GaN gate plateau voltage, V plateau and I G_CHARGE :
R9 = (V CC – V plateau ) / I G_CHARGE
= (24V- 2.9V) / 450mA = 46Ω (2)
51Ω is selected for R9.
The PGA26E19BA is a 600V, 10A GaN enhancement mode transistor.
It uses Panasonic’s proprietary Gate Injection Transistor (GIT) technology
to achieve normally off operation with single GaN device. This
extremely high switching speed GaN is capable of no current collapse
for up to 850V and has zero recovery loss characteristic.
Figure 4: 100-
150V, 5A chopper
board with
ACPL-352J and
PGA26E19BA
Figure 7: GaN transistor V GS vs. Q g characteristic
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 45

CONTENT OPTO
The “speed-up” capacitor, C16 can be calculated using the Qg characteristic
graph which shows the gate charge needed to turn on the
GaN is 4.5nC.
C16 > Qg / (V CC -V GS -∆V(neg))
= 4.5nC / (24V – 3.6V–5V) = 292pF (3)
A higher C16, 1nF is chosen to ensure more accumulation charge for
faster turn on.
overshoot voltage.
The entire over current protection is completed by reporting the /Fault
through the insolated feedback path to the controller. Beside over current
fault, the ACPL-352J also reports under high side under voltage
lockout fault (/UVLO) and GaN gate status fault (/Gfault).
Chopper Board Switching Performance
The GIT GaN transistor would require 4.75mA on state current to continuously
bias the V GS diode at 3.6V to maintain the transistor in on
state. This is provided V OUTP and the value of R15 can be calculated:
R15 = (V CC – V GSF ) / I G_ONSTATE
= (24V- 3.6V) / 4.75mA = 4.3kΩ (4)
4.3kΩ is selected for R15.
Switching off or discharging the gate of the GaN is done by ACPL-
352J’s V OUTN and R10. ACPL-352J is connected to a bi-directional
power supply and gate is discharge through V OUTN to -9V. At the
same time, the active Miller clamp (Mclamp) will turn on when the
gate discharge to -7V. GaN transistor has very low typical gate threshold
voltage of 1.2V. The negative gate voltage and active Miller clamp
help to hold the transistor in off state and shunt parasitic Miller current
to prevent false turn on. The peak discharging gate current can be
calculated:
I G_DISCHARGE = (V GSF – V EE2 ) / R10
= (3.6V- (- 9V)) / 27Ω = 0.467A (5)
Assuming R10 of 27Ω is used.
Figure 9: ACPL-352J functional safety fault reporting
The chopper board is designed to switch the GaN transistor at
100kHz with DC bus voltage from 100-150V. The GaN nominal working
drain current is 5A and over current threshold is set at 7A. Figure
10 shows the switching waveforms of the GaN V GS , V DS and I DS . As
the chopper board is not connected to any load to dissipate the energy,
I DS increases on very switching pulse and eventually triggers the
ACPL-352J’s V OC , over current detection threshold. The waveform on
the right zooms into the soft shutdown process once over current is
detected.
Protecting GaN Transistor
Figure 8: ACPL-352J over current protection circuit for GaN transistor
The drain-source voltage of the GaN is monitored by ACPL-352J’s
OC pin through high voltage blocking diode D2. The chopper is designed
to operate at 5A and over current threshold is set at 7A. When
over current occurs, the V DS of the GaN increases to about 0.8V.
ACPL-352J has an internal over current threshold voltage, V OC of 9V.
The threshold of the over current detection can then be set by Zener
diode, Z2.
Figure 10: Chopper board switching performance, over current detection
and soft shutdown
Other Design Considerations
Z2 = V OC – V D2 – V DS_OVERCURRENT = 9 – 0.7 – 0.8 = 7.5V (6)
During over current, if the GaN is shutdown abruptly, high overshoot
voltage induced by the load or any parasitic inductance can develop
across the drain and source of the GaN. The overshoot will damage
the GaN if it exceeds the breakdown voltage. To minimize such
damaging overshoot voltage, ACPL-352J’s pin 13, SS does a soft
shutdown when over current is detected. GaN gate voltage is slowly
reduced to low level off-state. The rate of soft shutdown can be
adjusted through external transistor Q1 and resistor R8 to reduce the
Figure 11: Chopper board schematic
46
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

CONTENT OPTO
The ACPL-352J is powered by a RECOM Econoline DC/DC converter
REC3.5-0512DRW. It is a 3.5W regulated converter and provides up
to 10kVDC of reinforced isolation. The 24V dual output is split by a
15V Zener diode Z1 to provide bi-directional gate voltage of +15 for
turning on and -9V for turning off.
Active clamping is provided by TVS diode TVS2, D5 and R14 to
clamp the V DS of the GaN from exceeding 300V. 15V Bi-directional
TVS diode TVS1is used to protect the gate of the GaN transistor.
Schottky diode D3 is used to clamp negative transient at ACPL-352J’s
V OC to prevent any false fault triggering.
Acknowledgement
Broadcom would like to thank Aaron Cai (Engineer) and Arnel Herreria
(Senior Engineer), GaN Field Application Team, Panasonic
Semiconductor Solutions Singapore for their technical support.
References
• “GaN Power Devices Overview ,” Panasonic Semiconductor http://
www.semicon.panasonic.co.jp/en/products/powerics/ganpower/
• “All-In-One Power Supply,” Panasonic Semiconductor
• Dr. Hong Lin,Dr. Pierric Gueguen, “GaN & SiC Devices. GaN & SiC
for power electronics applications report,” YOLE Développement,
July, 2015.
• “PGA26E19BA Datasheet,” Panasonic Semiconductor
• “ ACPL-352J 5.0 Amp Output Current IGBT and SiC/GaN MOSFET
Gate Drive Optocoupler with Integrated Over Current Sensing,
FAULT, GATE,and UVLO Status Feedback,” Avago Technologies,
pub-005603.
www.broadcom.com
Profit from the power electronics expert's experience
Design of complete or parts of SMPS, lamp ballasts, LED ps, D amplifiers, motor
electronics, amplifiers, measuring instruments, critical analog hardware. Experience
with SiC and GaN. EMI expertise. Minimum design times and favorable costs due to
experience and a large stock of SMPS components.
Assistance with your own designs in any design phase. Design approvals, failure
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Seminars, articles and books. Translations of technical and other critical texts German -
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Former manager of R & D / managing director in D, USA, NL,A.
Consultant and owner of an electronics design lab since 23 yrs.
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the current-mode control in SMPS (US Patent 3,742,371).
Names and business affairs of clients are kept strictly confidential.
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Mobile: +43 - 677.617.59237
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email: dr.seibt@aon.at
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www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 47

PACKAGING
CONTENT
Ag-Sintering as an Enabler for
Thermally Demanding Electronic
and Semiconductor Applications
Silver sintering has become a reliable industrial bonding technology with superior thermal
and electrical performance while meeting automotive grade quality standards.
By Marco Koelink, Advanced Packaging Center (APC),
Business Development Manager and Commercial Manager and
Michiel de Monchy, European Applications Manager Die Attach and Preforms,
Alpha Assembly Solutions
Silver (Ag) sintering or low-temperature diffusion bonding is receiving
an increasing interest, mainly because of excellent electrical and
thermal conductivities compared to other metals. In combination with
some very interesting optical properties, the potential applications
range from power electronics, to printable electronics and (optical)
biosensing (Peng, 2015). The use of Ag-sintering is currently mainly
driven by either the replacement of lead-containing bonding materials
(environmental or sustainability considerations) or the application
in power electronics, specifically in applications which are sensitive
to energy efficiency due to limited power availability such as is the
case for instance with electrical vehicles (EVs). Main consideration
in transitioning from traditional bonding materials to Ag-sintering are
cost and reliability (Scola, 2015). As early adopters of this technology
are pioneering now the application of this technology on an industrial
scale, more and more reliability data will becoming available. As the
technology is maturing and the number of applications is growing, it
is to be expected that also prices will eventually go down to become
more comparable with more traditional bonding materials. This will
open the market for more wide-spread applications. This paper
discusses some of the background of Ag-sintering, as well as some
of the industrialization and reliability aspects of this technology. The
companies APC, Boschman Technologies and Alpha Assembly Solutions
provide respectively development, equipment (industrialization)
and material services in this field.
The Silver sintering process is based on solid state diffusion, where
Silver particles are fused together and to the metallization of dies and
substrates. One of the major drivers for this process is the change
in free energy within the silver sintering product. Smaller particles
will have more free energy and need less external energy to initiate
the fusion process. Argomax®, a product group developed by Alpha
Assembly Solutions (see figure 1), contains agglomerates of particles
of about 20 nm, thus allowing sintering parameters at temperatures
comparable or lower to those of lead free solder reflow. This
temperature together with the relatively low pressures of maximally 10
MPa allows for a wide range of products to be sintered. The unique
sintering inhibiter of the Argomax ® allows the material to be deliver in
either paste or pre-dried film. This will again will increase the processing
possibilities within industrialized processes.
Ag-sintering
Many developments in solder technologies have over the last 10
years been driven by internation legislation to achieve lead-free solder
materials and improve the reliability of the joints. Recently also the
introduction of electric and hybrid automotive vehicles spurred the
demand of efficient high-power electronics, mainly to improve the driving
range (most important benchmark in competition with traditional
vehicles). Several technologies have been introduced meanwhile to
achieve high performance power modules with high reliability. Some
examples of such technology include for instance gold base, high cost
solders such as AuGe and AuSn, SnSb alloys, as well as silver sintering.
The silver sintering technology has been pioneered by several
solder material companies for several years (Siow, 2014). Using the
proprietatary knowledge of APC and Boschman Technologies, specifially
the dynamic insert technology, the technology has recently also
successfully been industrialized.
Figure 1: Alpha Assembly Solutions offers a range of sintering materials
in different formats suited for different applications
The fusion of the silver will only succeed if the interface materials
are pure metallic. Also both the metallization of the dies and the
substrates need to be relatively free of oxides. The easiest surface to
bond to is Ag itself. If Ag cannot be used, noble materials such, as Au,
Pd, or Pt are the next useable materials. The thicknesses of the met-
48
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CONTENT PACKAGING
allization does not need to be more than 1 µm because the diffusion
of the silver does not penetrate beyond 25 to 75 nm. When another
specific Argomax® material is used, sintering to Copper in an ambient
atmosphere can also be used. It is unfortunately not possible to bond
to surfaces that have got dense oxide structures such as Nickel and
Aluminum, nor can bare Si be used.
Silver sintering can be applied in many high-power or high-powerdensity
applications. This includes solid state lighting, high-power
(semiconductor) lasers, solar application (e.g. concentrated photo
voltaics), power electronics for wind turbine systems and more. Figure
3 shows an example of a power device. Design studies for LED packages
have shown to yield excellent performance and extremely stable
against further assembly processes and harsh operating conditions
(Jordan et al, 2015, see also figure 4). But also applications that are
sensitive to energy losses are utilizing silver sintering for instance in
energy harvesting in thermoelectric devices (piezoelectric) or printed
electronics.
Figure 2: Sinterstar Innovate-F-XL; Universal Sinter System using
Film-Assist and Dynamic Insert Technology; Ag Sintering Temperature
up to 320 °C; Real time controlled pressure (0.2-40 MPa); Large
sintering area 350 x 270 mm; Protecting gas supply optional and
Suitable for all kind of carriers, such as: - Lead frames – Substrates -
Ceramics – Wafers
Silver sintering meanhwile offers a new die attach technology with
a void-free and strong bond with very high thermal and electrical
conductivity (upt to 200-300 W/mK and 2-2.5 µΩcm). The Ag-sintering
process is defined either by temperature and time or temperature,
time and pressure. Whereas the process defined by temperature
and time (“pressure-less”) is relatively easily industrialized (via reflow
ovens or comparable), the process defined by temperature, time
and pressure requires accurate and independent control of all three
variables. It is for the process that requires pressure that Boschman
was able to develop and create both semi-automated (see figure
2) and full-automated equipment using their unique high precision
dynamic insert pressure control in combination with sophisticated and
precise temperature control. The systems provide automated control
of the sinter process with programmable temperatures up to 320 ⁰C,
pressures dynamically variable between at least 10-30 MPa and a
maximum sinter area of 350 x 270 mm. Boschman offers specific tool
solutions according customer wishes and application specific requirements.
A roll to roll film protects the devices during the sintering
operation and keeps the die clean. System can also run without film in
case direct hard sintering is needed.
Figure 3: an example of a lead frame based power device using silver
sintering
Specifically power applications however (IGBT’s, RF-power, power
MOSFET’s, thyristors and more) benefit from this technology (Yu,
2016). In particular application areas that are primarily driven by (ultimate)
perfomance justify the use of this technology over the (initial)
cost adder that is associated with this. A prime example is the industry
of electric and hybrid vehicles where efficient power electronics is
a necessity to compete with traditional combustion engine vehicles
to achieve sufficient driving range. Studies have shown that also
automotive applications high performance can be combines with high
reliability (Steger, 2012).
Applications and Reliability
Although silver sintering has attracted considerable attention, fundamental
understanding of this technology is still limited. Recently several
studies have been published aimed at gaining in-depth insights
into the physics of material and processes related to silver sintering
(e.g. Yan 2015, Peng 2015). Increased fundamental understanding
leads to better understanding of reliability and failure mechanisms.
Although with work is far from complete, sufficient information has
become available to suggest that Ag-sintering offers basically good
shear strength performance and thermo-mechanical reliability under
various conditions (Khazaka, 2014, Yan, 2016, Henaff, 2016 and
Greca, 2016). The pressurised version shows better performance
and better process control compared to the pressure-less version
(Khazaka, 2014).
Figure 4: Relative comparison of different die-attach technologies suitable
for LED applications. Courtesy of Courtesy Gyan Dutt, ALPHA,
LED A.R.T Conference, Nov 17-19 2015, Atlanta USA
Another advantage of silver sintering is that, after processing, the
melting temperature of the layer will be equal to the melting temperature
of Silver (962°C). This entails that the maximum junction
temperature Tj of a device can be significantly higher compared to
conventional die attach materials. (Khazaka, 2014). Materials can as
a rule of thumb only be reliably operated to 0.8 x the melting temperature
in degrees C. (Knoer 2010). This means that a high lead solder
50
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

PACKAGING CONTENT
can be operated up to 180°C, whereas a silver sintered bond can in
theory be operated up to 760°C. In practice the silver bond has been
tested up to 500°C. This facilitates the application of silver sintering
in combination of wide band-gap semiconductor materials (SiC, GaN)
which can operate at much higher temperatures compared to siliconbased
materials.
Meanwhile other application areas are being investigated, ranging
from surface mount applications, interconnect fabrication, substrate
bonding, printable electronics and more (Natsuki, 2015). Siow et al
(Siow, 2016) publised an overview on the development state of silver
sintering as a function of patent applications, processes, materials
and industries and companies that are commercializing this technology.
Conclusions
Silver sintering is emerging as a proven and reliable bonding technology
for high-power or high-power-density applications providing
superior electrical and thermal conductivity compared to traditional
bonding technologies. The technology is particularly suited for high
power electronics such as IGBT’s, and MOSFET’s, applications with
wide band-gap materials (SiC and GaN) and application that require
lead-free bonding materials or high performance (notably high power
electronics for electric and hybrid automotive vehicles). The sintering
technology is mostly categorized in pressure-less and pressurized applications.
Companies like Alpha Assembly Solutions and Boschman
provide industrial services and solutions for the industrialized use of
materials, processes and production equipment for the pressurized
applications that yield the best performane and reliabiliy.
www.alphaassembly.com
www.apcenter.nl
References
1. Siow, K.S., “Are Sintered Silver Joints Ready for Use as Interconnect
Material in Microelectronic Packaging?”, Journal of ELEC-
TRONIC MATERIALS, Vol. 43, No. 4, 2014
2. Khazaka, R., Mendizabal, L. and Henry, D., “A review on nanosilver
interconnection: parameters affecting the joint shear strength
and its long term high temperature reliability “, Journal of Electronic
Materials, Vol 43, No 7, July 2014, p 2459-2466.
3. Natsuki, J., Natsuki, T, Hashimoto, Y. , “A Review of Silver
Nanoparticles: Synthesis Methods Properties and Applications“,
International Journal of Materials Science and Applications,
Vol 4(5): p325-332, 2015
4. Jordan, R.C., Weber, C., Ehrhardt, C., Wilke, M., and Jaeschke,
J., “Advanced packaging methods for highpower LED
modules“,Journal of Solid State Lighting, Vol 2, No 4, 2015
5. Le Henaff, F., Greca, G., Salerno, P., Mathieu, O., Reger, M.,
Khaselev, O., Bouregdha, M., Durham, J., Lifton, A., Harel, J.C.,
Laud, S., He, W., Sarkany, Z., Proulx, J. and Parry, J., “Reliability
of Double Side Silver Sintered Devices with various Substrate
Metallization“, PCIM Europe 2016
6. Steger, J., “With Sinter-Technology: Forward to Higher Reliability
of Power Modules for Automotive Applications”. Power Electronics
Europe, Issue 2 2012.
7. Knoerr, M., Schletz A; “Power Semiconductor Joining through
Sintering of Silver Nanoparticles: Evaluation of Influence of Parameters
Time, Temperature and Pressure on Density, Strength and
Reliability” CIPS 2010
8. Yan, J., Zou, G., Liu, L., Zhang, D., Bai, H., Wu, A. and Zhou Y.N.,
“Sintering mechanisms and mechanical properties of joints bonded
using silver nanoparticles for electronic packaging applications”,
Welding in the World, May 2015, Vol 59, Issue 3, pp 427-432.
9. Peng, P., Hu, A., Gerlich, A.P., Zou, G., Liu, L. and Zhou, Y.N.,
“Joining of Silver Nanomaterials at Low Temperatures: Processes,
Properties, and Applications”, ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2015,
Vol 7, pp 12597−12618
10. Yan, J., Zhang, D., Zou, G., Liu, L., Bai, H., Wu, A. and Zhou, Y.N.,
“Sintering Bonding Process with Ag Nanoparticle Paste and Joint
Properties in High Temperature Environment” Journal of Nanomaterials,
2016, Vol 2016, pp 1-8
11. Siow, K.S. and Lin Y.T., “Identifying the Development State of
Sintered Silver (Ag) as A Bonding Material in the Microelectronic
Packaging via A Patent Landscape Study”, Journal of Electronic
Packaging, Vol 138, Issue 2, April 2016,
12. Greca, G., Le Henaff, F., Harel, J.C., Boschman, E. and He, W.,
“Double Side Sintered IGBT 650V/ 200A in a TO-247 Package for
Extreme Performance and Reliability”, 18th Electronics Packaging
Technology Conference, Singapore, November 2016.
13. Yu, F. “Ag Sintering Die and Passive Components Attach for High
Temperature Applications”, dissertation Auburn University Alabama,
USA 2016.
14. Scola, J., Tassart, X., Vilar, C., Jomard, F., Dumas, E., Veniaminova,
Y.,Boullay, P. and Gascoin, S. “Microstructure and electrical
resistance evolution during sintering of a Ag nanoparticle paste.”,
Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, 2015, Volume 48, Number
14.
Advanced Packaging Center
Marco Koelink
Stenograaf 3
6921 EX Duiven
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 6 46846563
Fax: +31 26 3194999
E-mail: MarcoKoelink@apcenter.nl
Alpha Assembly Solutions
Michiel de Monchy
Energiestraat 21
1411 AR Naarden
The Netherlands
Mobile: +31 (0)622 415 413
Office: +31 (0) 35 69 55 429
Michiel.deMonchy@alphaassembly.com
www.alphaassembly.com
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 51

CONTENT
BATTERY
for Traction Application
Introduction
requirements for the test procedures. The main focus of a test bench
Therefore, already during the development process, qualified testing is to provide the most flexible test execution and a high power range
Introduction of the necessary, application-specific requirements is inevitable. To of the future batteries. The execution of the test procedures has to
Battery achieve storages meaningful for use mobile results, traction there applications is a compelling must meet need high to requirements. execute all Criteria be as realistic and application-oriented as possible. Considering the
such as energy storage capacity and size, characterized by the energy or power density, as
these test procedures as realistically as possible and in an application-oriented
and, hence, manner. as a selection Only then criteria can for statements the planned application. be made about Therefore, the already a unique high-performance test bench for these systems is presented
requirements for the process of testing a high-power traction battery,
well as the implemented safety concepts, serve as a basis for the first valuation of the storage
systems
during behaviour the development of the battery process, system qualified in the testing later-intended of the necessary, application. application-specific in this section.
requirements is inevitable. To achieve meaningful results, there is a compelling need to
execute all these test procedures as realistically as possible and in an application-oriented
manner. High-Power Only then can Traction statements Battery be made about the behaviour of the battery system in the The power electronic interface of the test bench consists of two
later-intended application.
The following considerations only refer to the lithium-ion battery, two-level converters, connected via the shared dc-link. The three
High-Power because this Traction technology Battery has the potential to fulfil the demands of half-bridges of the output dc-dc converter are controlling the battery
traction battery, a unique high-performance test bench for these systems is presented in this
The following energy and considerations power density only refer today the for lithium-ion its application battery, in because electric this vehicles technology has section. current, while the grid side converter controls the dc-link voltage and
the potential to fulfil the demands of energy and power density today for its application in
electric [1]. vehicles As figure [1]. 1 As reveals, figure a 1 battery reveals, system a battery consists system consists of various of various complex complex the grid current. With this configuration, the test bench allows a bidirectional
via power the shared flow, dc-link. with a The maximum three half-bridges operating of the power output of dc-dc 250 converter kVA, a are
The power electronic interface of the test bench consists of two two-level converters,
components.
connected
controlling the battery current, while the grid side converter controls the dc-link voltage and the
grid output current. voltage With this range configuration, of 0-750 the V test and bench a maximum allows a bidirectional output current power flow, up with to a
maximum ± 800 A. operating This ensures power of high-power 250 kVA, a output and voltage energy-efficient range of 0-750 experiments.
V and a maximum
output current up to ± 800 A. This ensures high-power and energy-efficient experiments. Figure
2 Figure presents 2 the presents principle wiring the principle diagram of wiring the output diagram power connections. of the output power
connections.
52
Qualification and Verification of
High-Power Battery Systems for
Traction Application
Battery storages for use in mobile traction applications must meet high requirements.
Criteria such as energy storage capacity and size, characterized by the energy or power
density, as well as the implemented safety concepts, serve as a basis for the first valuation
of the storage systems and, hence, as a selection criteria for the planned application.
By Johannes Büdel, M.Eng. and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Teigelkötter, University of Applied
Qualification Sciences and Verification Aschaffenburg of High-Power and Battery Dipl.-Ing. Systems Klaus Lang, HBM Test and Measurement
+ + +
+ + +
+ + +
Figure 1: Components Figure 1: Components and Typical and Typical Setup Setup of of a a Traction Battery
Bodo´s Power Systems ® dynamic manner. For understanding and verifying the battery behaviour under different
February 2017 www.bodospower.com
Besides the interconnection of the single cells, a battery system consists of further mechanical Figure 2: Output Wiring Diagram and Measured System Quantities
Figure 2: Output Wiring Diagram and Measured System Quantities
and electrical Besides components the interconnection which permit of the the operation single cells, of the system. a battery These system components have
to be closely coordinated with each other and with the intended application. The complexity of
consists of further mechanical and electrical components which permit To ensure accurate accurate investigation investigation results and results to not strain and the to DUT not unnecessarily, strain the DUT it has to be
individual components leads to a complex interaction, and therefore, to a highly sophisticated charged with a low ripple current. Thus, it is guaranteed that the DUT is solely charged with
battery the system. operation Thereby of the exists system. the absolute These components necessity for have a realistic to be verification closely of the the unnecessarily, predefined and it standardized has to be load charged profiles, with so a the low reaction ripple of current. the DUT Thus, is obviously it
interaction for the intended application. Altogether, which tests are performed at each step is attributable to them. Therefore, the three output half-bridges are built to a multiphase
coordinated with each other and with the intended application. The is guaranteed that the DUT is solely charged with the predefined and
a different matter and depends on the specifics of the process and the device as well as the interleaved current-sharing converter. As a result of the approach to switch the three phases
intended complexity application. of individual Only after conducting components this qualification leads to a and complex verification interaction, process, a battery interleaved, standardized for a phase load shift profiles, exactly so 120 the °, reaction the inductor of ripple the currents DUT is tend obviously to cancel each
system and is therefore, enabled use to a in highly the application.
other, resulting in a smaller ripple current [2]. Under certain conditions, it is possible to eliminate
sophisticated battery system. Thereby exists the attributable ripple current to at them. the output Therefore, node. The the phase three relationship output in half-bridges Figure 3 shows are how built ripple
High-Performance the absolute necessity Test for Bench a realistic verification of the interaction for current to a multiphase cancellation works. interleaved Furthermore, current-sharing to minimize the ripple converter. current for As all a operating result points, of
an individual filter network is developed. As a result, the output ripple current over the entire
In accordance the intended with application. the high and individual Altogether, requirements which tests of high-power are performed traction at batteries, a voltage the approach range of the to test switch bench the is minimized three phases below 1 A. interleaved, for a phase shift
corresponding each step test is bench a different has to matter fulfil the and high requirements depends on for the the specifics test procedures. of the The main of exactly 120 °, the inductor ripple currents tend to cancel each other,
focus of a test bench is to provide the most flexible test execution and a high power range of Along with the low ripple current and the high power range, the test bench offers the possibility
the future process batteries. and The the execution device as of well the test as procedures the intended has to application. be as realistic Only and applicationoriented
conducting as possible. this Considering qualification the and requirements verification for the process, a of battery testing system a high-power to the specified test conditions and battery systems. Also, it offers the possibility to execute
after to resulting execute realistic in a smaller and application-oriented ripple current test [2]. procedures. Under The certain test bench conditions, can flexibly it adapt is
possible to eliminate the ripple current at the output node. The phase
common test procedures like determining the capacity or cycle tests, as well as more complex
is enabled for use in the application.
investigations relationship like in the Figure determination 3 shows of the how internal ripple DC current and AC resistance. cancellation Due works. to the high
degree of flexibility, the test bench is also suitable for other DC test applications.
Furthermore, to minimize the ripple current for all operating points,
Instrumentation
High-Performance Test Bench
an individual filter network is developed. As a result, the output ripple
Another important aspect of setting up a test environment for the qualification and verification
In accordance with the high and individual requirements of high-power process current of over traction the batteries entire is voltage the selection range and of optimisation the test bench of appropriate is minimized measurement
traction batteries, a corresponding test bench has to fulfil the high equipment. below 1 A. This is necessary to achieve reliable results, based on which, precise statements
about the behaviour of the battery system in the later-intended application can be made. So
the reaction of the DUT during a test procedure has to be recorded in a highly-precise and
conditions, the discrete signals have to be synchronized. According to the different signal types
and ranges, a suitable data acquisition system has to flexibly adapt to the specific conditions

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2
2
2
2
CONTENT
BATTERY
Along with the low ripple current and the high power range, the test
bench offers the possibility to execute realistic and application-oriented
test procedures. The test bench can flexibly adapt to the specified
test conditions and battery systems. Also, it offers the possibility to
execute common test procedures like determining the capacity or
cycle tests, as well as more complex investigations like the determination
of the internal DC and AC resistance. Due to the high degree of
flexibility, the test bench is also suitable for other DC test applications.
Figure 4 presents a technique to measure the DC resistance of a
battery. This method is based on the voltage change during a current
pulse. Ideally, the current jumps from a small value (e.g. 0.1 C-Rate)
to a high value (e.g. 2 C-Rate). After a defined duration, the voltage
drop is measured. Following this, the voltage change is divided by the
current change. The result is the internal resistance of the DUT. [4]
100,0 V
2 1
1 75,45 V
2 93,77 V
Instrumentation
Another important aspect of setting up a test environment for the
-10,0 V
qualification and verification process of traction batteries is the selection
and optimisation of appropriate measurement equipment. This
100,0 A
is necessary to achieve reliable results, based on which, precise
i_batt
1 -400,3 A
2 -21,41 A
statements about the behaviour of the battery system in the laterintended
application can be made. So the reaction of the DUT during
-500,0 A
a test procedure has to be recorded in a highly-precise and dynamic
500,0 ms/div
manner. For understanding and verifying the battery behaviour under
Figure 4: DC-Resistance Test Method, Measured with GEN3i
Figure 4: DC-Resistance Test Method, Measured with GEN3i
different conditions, the discrete signals have to be synchronized.
Literature
According to the different signal types and ranges, a suitable data
[1] International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC): Electrical Energy Storage, White
acquisition system has to flexibly adapt to the specific conditions and Literature
Paper, 12/2011.
signal ranges. Just as important as the adaptation to the different [2][1] Linear International Technology Electrotechnical Corporation: High Efficiency, Commission High Density, (IEC): PolyPhase Electrical Converters Energy
Storage, White Paper, 12/2011.
for
High Current Applications.
signal levels, is to ensure that the huge number of different signals
http://cds.linear.com/docs/en/applicationnote/an77f.pdf.,
1999
can be recorded simultaneously.
[3][2] Eberlein; Linear Technology Lang; Teigelkötter; Corporation: Kowalski: High Electromobility Efficiency, in the High fast Density, lane: increased
efficiency for the drive of the future. Proceedings of the 3rd conference of Innovation in
and signal ranges. Just as important as the adaptation to the different signal levels, is to ensure
Measurement PolyPhase Technology, Converters 14.5.2013 for High Current Applications. http://cds.
that The the HBM-GEN3i huge number of is different especially signals suited can be for recorded this high simultaneously. requirement of [4] Jossen; linear.com/docs/en/application-note/an77f.pdf., Weydanz: Moderne Akkumulatoren richtig einsetzen. 1999 Untermeitingen: Ingedata
acquisition and transient recording. The GEN3i data recorder
Reichardt-Verlag, 2006. ISBN: 3-939359-11-4
The HBM-GEN3i especially suited for this high requirement of data acquisition and transient
recording. [3] Eberlein; Lang; Teigelkötter; Kowalski: Electromobility in the fast
enables The synchronous GEN3i data acquisition recorder enables of all synchronous important quantities acquisition of in energyrelated
[3]. With systems this data with recorder, a large the number commissioning of channels of the test and bench high as sampling well as the data
all important
quantities in energy-related systems with a large number of channels and high sampling lane: increased efficiency for the drive of the future. Proceedings
rates
acquisition of the 3rd conference of Innovation in Measurement Technology,
rates [3]. during With test this procedures data recorder, can be the accomplished. commissioning Post process, of the the test data can be
analysed and further processed. Figure 2 shows the measurement acquisition of system 14.5.2013
quantities bench as which well are as sent the to the data GEN3i. acquisition during test procedures can be
accomplished. Post process, the data can be analysed and further [4] Jossen; Weydanz: Moderne Akkumulatoren richtig einsetzen.
Exemplary Measurements
processed. Figure 2 shows the measurement acquisition of system Untermeitingen: Inge-Reichardt-Verlag, 2006. ISBN: 3-939359-11-4
Methods for Ripple Current Reduction
The quantities measurement which in Figure are sent 8 shows to the principle GEN3i. of the interleaved switching method and the
effects of the low-pass filter on the ripple current. Due to the ripple current cancellation effect
for interleaved switching the ripple currents tend to eliminate each other. This results in a
Exemplary Measurements
www.hbm.com
reduced current ripple in the node point. Furthermore, the filter network is final damping this
ripple Methods current below for Ripple 1 A. Current Reduction
u_L1
1 ----- V
----- V
u_L2
1 ----- V
----- V
u_L3
1 ----- V
----- V
i_L1
1 ----- A
----- A
i_L2
1 ----- A
----- A
i_L3
1 ----- A
----- A
800,0 V
800,0 V
800,0 V
-50,0 V
-50,0 V
-50,0 V
100,0 A
100,0 A
100,0 A
-100,0 A
-100,0 A
-100,0 A
100,0 A
100,0 A
u_batt
Johannes Büdel,
M.Eng.
University of Applied
Sciences Aschaffenburg
www.h-ab.de
i_node
1 ----- A
----- A
i_batt
1 ----- A
----- A
-100,0 A
-100,0 A
50,00 µs/div
Figure 3: Interleaved
Figure 3: Interleaved
Waveforms, Measured with
GEN3i,
GEN3i,
DD = 0.85
Determination of the Internal DC Resistance
Besides The measurement the battery capacity, in Figure internal 8 resistance shows the is also principle one of the of major the interleaved
battery parameters.
The lower the resistance, the lesser the restriction the battery encounters in delivering the
needed switching power method spikes. Figure and the 4 presents effects a of technique the low-pass to measure filter the on DC the resistance ripple of a
battery. current. This Due method to is the based ripple on the current voltage cancellation change during a effect current for pulse. interleaved Ideally, the current
jumps from a small value (e.g. 0.1 C-Rate) to a high value (e.g. 2 C-Rate). After a defined
duration, switching the voltage the ripple drop currents is measured. tend Following to eliminate this, the each voltage other. change This divided results by the
current in a reduced change. The current result is ripple the internal the resistance node point. of the DUT. Furthermore, [4] the filter
network is final damping this ripple current below 1 A.
Determination of the Internal DC Resistance
Besides the battery capacity, internal resistance is also one of the
major battery parameters. The lower the resistance, the lesser the restriction
the battery encounters in delivering the needed power spikes.
Prof. Dr.-Ing.
Johannes Teigelkötter,
University of
Applied Sciences
Aschaffenburg
Dipl.-Ing. Klaus Lang,
HBM Test and Measurement
54
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
The Creation of SiC -
“Cell Structures and
Production Process”
The first part of this article series described the creation of Silicon Carbide (SiC) substrate
wafers, starting with the production of the raw material (SiC powder) to the so-called
epi-ready SiC substrate wafers.
By Aly Mashaly, Manager Power Systems Department, Rohm Semiconductor GmbH
And Mineo Miura, SiC Power Device Engineer, Rohm Co., Ltd.
The second part deals with the potential structures of SiC devices,
focusing on different structures including SiC Schottky Barrier Diodes
(SBDs), planar SiC MOSFETs and double trench MOSFETs, showing
that cell structures significantly variate the physical properties
and the performance of the final product. Finally, production testing
procedures followed by Rohm for quality assurance purposes are
discussed.
Introduction
AC/DC, DC/AC, DC/DC and AC/AC converters are the most popular
power electronic systems. The efficiency of conventional power
electronics technologies usually varies between 85 and 95 percent.
In other words, approximately 10% of electrical energy is dissipated
in form of heat at each power conversion stage. Generally speaking,
the performance of power semiconductors is considered to be the
main limiting factor for the efficiency of power electronics. Therefore,
developing high-voltage and low-loss power semiconductors is a
prerequisite for building the power grids of the future.
According to laws of semiconductor physics, the specific on resistance
(RonA) increases dramatically with the breakdown voltage. Due
to the above mentioned properties of SiC, the RonA value of SiC will
be 100 times lower at high voltages compared to Si. Because of its
low RonA characteristics at high voltage, there is no need for using
minority carrier device structure normally used in silicon high voltage
devices like IGBTs and FRDs. In SiC power devices, majority of carrier
devices like MOSFETs and SBDs are used for 600 to 3.3kV voltage
range. Due to the absence of minority carriers in current conduction
the switching speed of SiC is dramatically improved, which lead to a
dramatic reduction in switching losses. The mentioned features make
SiC a very promising material for high-voltage applications, where
thermal management is particularly important.
Compared to silicon (Si) semiconductors, the electrical field strength
of SiC is almost ten times higher (2.8MV/cm vs. 0.3MV/cm). The
increased field strength of SiC material enables the deposition of
a thinner layer structure, which is known as epitaxial layers on the
SiC substrate. Its thickness is about one tenth of that of Si epitaxial
layers. At the same breakdown voltage, the doping concentration of
SiC can be two orders of magnitude higher than of its Si equivalent.
This reduces the device’s specific on resistance (RonA), resulting in a
significant reduction of its conduction losses (Figure 1).
Figure 2: Specific on resistance (RonA) vs. breakdown voltage
Figure 1: The thinner layer stack enabled by the increased breakdown
field strength of SiC leads to lower conduction losses
Figure 3: Many physical properties make SiC an attractive proposition
for power electronics applications
56
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
Challenges facing power electronic systems have increased significantly
in recent years. Requirements such as weight and efficiency
play a predominant role. Furthermore, total system costs and efforts
must be low during production phase, without degrading the quality
and robustness of the end product. Thanks to its physical properties,
SiC has an enormous potential to meet the requirements of these
challenges and the associated market trends. In power electronic
systems, thermal design plays an important role in achieving systems
featuring high power density and compact size. SiC is perfectly
suited for these applications, as it offers a three times better thermal
conductivity than Si semiconductors. In addition, SiC supports higher
operating temperatures (even over 250° C is in principle possible)
compared to Si semiconductors because of its wider band gap (three
times of Si).
SiC Diodes
Compared to Si diodes, SiC SBDs are much more attractive for power
electronic applications especially at voltages of 600V and beyond.
SiC SBDs feature much better efficiency due to their lower switching
losses and the elimination of the so-called reverse recovery current
during turn-off (see Figure 5). The EMI performance of the entire system
is improved because EMI emissions are reduced accordingly.
The Production of a SiC Device
The SiC substrate wafer was described in detail in part 1 of this article
series. These substrate wafers act as the base material for the subsequent
production of SiC devices. Specific structures consisting of
epitaxial layers, doping processes and metallization finally produce a
SiC device, which can be a SiC diode, a SiC MOSFET or even a SiC
IGBT depending on the specific structures.
During the development of SiC devices, a highly precise epitaxial
growth process is an essential prerequisite for producing drift layers
with the desired thickness and optimum doping concentration. Using
process optimization and adequate cleaning and conditioning of
polished surface of substrate, it is possible to achieve extremely high
purity along with high quality SiC epitaxial layers.
Activation annealing of the selectively doped area formed by ionimplantation
at temperatures of more than 1600°C is among the
challenges posed by the production of SiC devices. This has to
do with the high stability of the material. Gate oxidation represents
another challenge. Due to the remaining carbon clusters in the MOS
interface (SiC + O2 => SiO2 + ↑CO2 +↑ CO + C), the channel mobility
of SiC MOSFETs is very low compared to Si, leading to elevated
channel resistances even at high gate voltages (Vgs) of i.e. 20V.
Thus, the specific on resistance (RonA) of commercial MOSFETs is
higher than the expected ideal values. Furthermore, this interface
occasionally leads to unstable Vth values or poor Qbd values. Using
a proprietary gate oxidation technology, Rohm managed to present
its SiC MOSFETs to the market, featuring stable Vth values and high
Qbd levels equivalent to Si MOSFETs.
The device manufacturing process results in a so-called SiC-device
wafer (Figure 4). In the subsequent processing steps, wafer is sawn
and the devices are picked-up from this wafer for use in the final
products (discrete packages or power modules).
Figure 5: SiC SBDs feature better switching behavior than standard
Si FRDs
SiC SBDs feature much lower reverse recovery currents and shorter
reverse recovery times, which reduces the relevant energy losses
significantly.
ROHM has introduced its technological advances into the market with
its second-generation SiC SBDs. The cross section of a SiC SBD is
depicted in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Structure of Rohm’s second-generation SiC SBDs
Rohm diodes feature the lowest forward voltage worldwide (Figure
7). At the same time, they provide low leakage currents thanks to the
precise manufacturing processes.
Figure 4: SiC-device
wafer from ROHM Semiconductor
Figure 7: SiC SBD forward voltage at Tj = 125°C
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 57

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
Rohm’s portfolio of second-generation SiC SBDs currently includes
650V products for 5A to 100A as well as 1200V and 1700V devices
for a current level up to 50A. Automotive qualified SiC-SBDs from
Rohm are also available. They are widely used in On-board charger
Systems.
Third-Generation SiC Diodes
The motivation for the development of the third generation
In applications like switched-mode power supplies (SMPS), SiC SBDs
are now well known to be the better alternative to Si-based FRDs
(Fast Recovery Diodes) in PFC stages (power factor correction).
In this application, a large inrush current occurs at starting phase
because the intermediate circuit capacitor (D.C. Link Capacitor) is
not charged before turn-on. Due to the lower surge-current capability
(IFSM) of Rohm’s second-generation SiC SBDs, it is recommended to
use bypass diodes in such SMPS applications. To support continuously
downsizing requirements from the market Rohm designed
its third-generation SiC SBDs meeting requirements of high surge
current capability IFSM of the market (Figure 8). Initial products up to
10A are already available.
implemented planar structure in their products. It is a well-known fact
that a parasitic diode (the so-called body diode) is formed between
the P layer and the N drift layer of a MOSFET (Fig. 10). In the history
of SiC device development, so-called “bipolar degradation” has been
one of the most critical issues. The device’s on-resistance increases
when a current is flowing in the body diode. Therefore, a stable behavior
of the body diode is critical for the reliability of a SiC MOSFET
in the final application. To ensure the reliability of their systems, power
electronic engineers expect that the behavior of the body diode does
not degrade.
Figure 10: ROHM SiC MOSFET 2nd. Generation is based on a planar
structure
Figure 8: Structure of Rohm’s new JBS SiC diode
With the development of the Junction Barrier Schottky structure
(JBS), Rohm managed to combine all advantages of SiC diodes in a
single device. In this approach, P+ region are embedded underneath
the Schottky barrier with optimum spacing in order to increase the
diode’s robustness while keeping the low Vf.
But what influences the degradation of the body diode?
Both crystal defects and manufacturing process of SiC MOSFETs
have a great influence on the stability of the body diode. By acquiring
the energy of hole-electron recombination when forward current flows,
a certain type of a crystal dislocation changes its type from linear to
planer shape. That can lead to a degradation of the on resistance of
the body diode and the MOSFET. Based on its expertise in different
manufacturing processes at the substrate, epitaxial growth and device
level Rohm managed to prevent the degradation of the body diode.
Figure 9: The new JBS diode combines the advantages of SBDs and
PN diodes
Due to the PN structure within the diode and the injection of minority
carriers, the resistance of the epitaxial layer decreases with increasing
temperature. On the other hand, the resistance of the epitaxial
layer increases with the temperature of the SBD structure (Figure 9).
SiC MOS Structures
Rohm’s Second-Generation Planar Structure
The planar structure, which is among the most well-known structures
of the semiconductor industry, also lends itself to SiC-MOS devices
for high-voltage applications. Rohm is among leading suppliers that
Figure 11: Rohm’s SiC MOSFETs exhibit no on-resistance degradation
Figures 11 and 12 illustrate the results of comparative measurements
between Rohm MOSFETs and planar SiC MOSFETs from other manufacturer.
In particular, 4 planar MOSFETs from other supplier were
compared to 22 planar MOSFETs from Rohm. All the evaluated MOS-
FETs feature a breakdown voltage of 1200V. Typical on resistance is
0.08Ω. Source current of 8A was conducted through body-diode.
After 24 hours of continuous current flow, the on-resistance of the
planar MOSFETs of other supplier had dramatically increased and
blocking capability was lost. While Rohm’s planar MOSFETs exhibited
no performance degradation even after 1000 hours.
58
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
Exclusively from Rohm: The Third-Generation Trench Structure
For several decades, the trench gate structure has been a proven
approach in low voltage Si-MOSFETs and Si IGBTs. This technology
turned out to be beneficial for many power electronic applications. As
the gate electrode is embedded into the drift layer, width of unit cell
can be shrinked which enables higher current density. Exploring the
conventional trench gate technology used for SiC MOSFETs, ROHM’s
designers found interesting facts.
Figure 12: Rohm’s SiC MOSFETs exhibit no blocking voltage degradation
As SiC features higher electrical field strengths than Si IGBTs, using
the conventional trench gate structure would result in the following
problem. In the off-state of a SiC device, a strong electrical field of
approximately 2.66MV/cm occurs at the gate trench. The excessive
stress applied to the gate oxide would degrade the reliability
and lifetime of the devices significantly. Therefore, ROHM’s double
trench SiC MOSFET structure was designed to suppress this strong
electrical field. In this approach, the source and gate electrodes are
embedded into the drift layer (the source electrode is cut deeper than
the gate electrode). As a result, the gate oxide is exposed to electrical
field strength of less than 1.66MV/cm (Figure 13). Deeper source
electrodes therefore prevent the concentration of electrical fields at
the bottom of the gate.
As an additional advantage of the trench structure, the on-resistance
(Rdson) is reduced by 50% at the same die size, which contributes
to a significant reduction of the conduction losses (Figure 14). Input
capacity is also reduced by 35%, resulting in lower switching losses
and a substantial reduction of the total energy losses. This structure
is therefore considered to be an important step towards even more
efficient modules featuring increased power density. Furthermore,
Figure 13: Comparison of electrical fields in single trench and double
trench structures
Figure 14: Trench SiC MOS devices feature 50% lower Rdson values
www.bodospower.com February 2017 Bodo´s Power Systems ® 59

TECHNOLOGY
CONTENT
the reliability of the gate oxide is improved by the reduction of the
electrical field strength. ROHM started its volume production of thirdgeneration
SiC MOS products with discrete SiC devices and full-SiC
modules based on its proprietary double trench technology. This
expands the existing MOSFET product lineup and contributes to the
design of highly efficient and highly reliable power electronics.
All kinds of macroscopic defects occurring during the epitaxial growth
phase result in a significant increase of the leakage current and a
degradation of the breakdown voltage which both influence the reliability
of the SiC device.
For these reasons, it is essential to understand the physical properties
of the materials used in order to retrace the defects that can
occur during the manufacturing process. This enables a continuous
improvement of the manufacturing process.
Furthermore, Rohm conducts various tests during the manufacturing
process in order to screen defective parts and to ensure full control
over each processing step. This enables ROHM to ensure the delivery
of sustainable products for high-volume markets.
Figure 15: Quality assurance during Rohm’s SiC manufacturing process
Quality Assurance Measures for Rohm’s SiC Devices
SiC is a promising wide-band-gap material for industrial and automotive
applications. Naturally, technology maturity and product quality
are important factors for convincing the market that SiC can in fact
meet the reliability and lifetime requirements of their systems. Quite
often, however, it must still be determined how a semiconductor
manufacturer like ROHM can ensure the quality of its SiC manufacturing
process. Based on many years of experience in development
and production of SiC and Si and big investments into its manufacturing
sites, ROHM manages to meet and even exceed the reliability
requirements.
Possible Defects During SiC Wafer Production
As reported in the first part of this article series and in numerous
publications of research institutes and universities, SiC crystals can
exhibit various defects including:
• Micro pipes
• Threading screw dislocation (TSD)
• Threading edge dislocation (TED)
• Dislocations in the planes perpendicular to the crystallographic
main axis
Most defects in the substrate result in damages to the layers during
the epitaxial growth phase. On the other hand, other defects can also
occur during the epitaxial growth phase, the ion implantation and dry
etching processes. These spot defects usually emerge independent of
the substrate’s quality.
Rohm’s Production Tests
Rohm’s quality control is based on 100% optical inspections and
electrical tests. In addition, special inspections are made during
the manufacturing process of SiC devices. SiC devices with visible
defects generally fail during the electrical tests (gate-source or drainsource
shorts). Nonetheless, Rohm makes an optical inspection at the
beginning of device production to screen any substrate and epi-layer
defects.
In addition to visible defects, there may also be invisible faults including
minor crystal defects in the substrate. This can even be more
critical because devices featuring these invisible defects can operate
flawlessly for an indefinite time but fail in the field, thereby degrading
the reliability of the system. To prevent this, Rohm uses its unique
screening technologies to detect invisible defects before delivery to
the customer. The technical parameters of the devices are checked
by electrical characterization at the end of the manufacturing process.
For traceability reasons, all steps are documented for every single
device.
www.rohm.com/eu
Aly Mashaly, Manager Power Systems
Department Rohm Semiconductor GmbH
Mineo Miura,
SiC Power Device
Engineer, Rohm Co., Ltd.
60
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

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based on the same anti-oxidant formula used in Rogers RO4835
laminates and are more resistant to oxidation than other hydrocarbonbased
laminates.
Rogers RO4830 high frequency thermoset laminates are available in
standard panel sizes of 12 × 18 in. (305 × 457 mm), 24 × 18 in. (610
× 457 mm), and 48 × 36 in. (1220 × 914 mm) with 0.5 oz. (18 µm) or
1.0 oz (35 µm) reverse-treated EDC foil.
High-Power, High-Efficacy XLamp MHB-B LEDs
Mouser Electronics, is now stocking the
Cree® XLamp® MHB-B LEDs. These highpower
LEDs enable designers to more effectively
deliver lower system costs for highlumen,
high-efficiency applications designed
to meet the new DesignLights Consortium
(DLC) 4.0 Premium requirements.
The Cree XLamp MHB-B LEDs, available
from Mouser Electronics, incorporate key elements
of Cree's SC5 Technology Platform
to combine high light output, high efficacy
and high reliability to enable high lumen LED
designs that are not possible with mid-power
LEDs. The LEDs deliver up to 931 lumens
at 85 degrees Celsius and 13 percent higher
lumens per watt (LPW) than the MHB-A LED
in the same 5mm × 5mm package, allowing
lighting manufacturers to quickly increase
Dengrove Electronic Components has extended its portfolio of
EN50155-compliant DC/DC converters by introducing the RECOM
RPA120H-RW, which delivers up to 120W in the industry-standard
half-brick footprint of 61.0mm x 57.9mm.
performance for existing MHB designs without
any additional investment.
The MHB-B LED enables designs that use
significantly lighter and smaller heat sinks
than designs based on midpower
LEDs.
www.rogerscorp.com
For example, a high-bay reference design
built with MHB-B LEDs delivers 24,000
lumens and more than 130 LPW system
efficacy at 44 percent less weight and 36
percent smaller diameter than comparable
high bays based on mid-power LEDs. Built
on Cree’s high-power ceramic technology,
the MHB-B LEDs have LM-80 data available
immediately, delivering reported L90 lifetime
projections of 60,000 hours at 105 degrees
Celsius.
Cree XLamp MHB-B LEDs are available from
Mouser Electronics in color temperatures
ranging from 2700K to 5000K and color rendering
indexes (CRI) of 70, 80, and 90. For
more information, visit
www.mouser.com/new/cree/cree-mhb-b/.
120W Half-Brick DC/DC Converters for Rail and Monitoring
Applications
In addition to satisfying EN50155, the harmonised European standard
covering electronic equipment for railway rolling stock, the RPA120H-
RW also complies with the UL and IEC/EN 60950-1 industrial safety
specifications and is therefore suited a wide range of communication,
control and monitoring applications.
The single-output converter can be specified with either 12V, 15V or
24V output voltage, and has a wide 4:1input-voltage range spanning
53V to 154V. Tight output-voltage regulation, with ripple and noise below
100mVp-p, ensure stable power for sensitive equipment deployed
in challenging environments. The output voltage can be trimmed by
±10% using external trim-up and trim-down resistors, or adjusted via
remote-sense inputs.
Over-temperature, short-circuit, over-current and over-voltage protection
are built in, and the converters also ensure user safety by providing
3kV isolation and meeting standards for reinforced insulation. All
units come with RECOM’s three-year manufacturer’s warranty.
www.dengrove.com
62
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

Unparalleled Accuracy in High-Frequency
CONTENT
Reactor Loss Measurement
POWER ANALYZER PW6001
±0.02% rdg. basic accuracy for power
5MS/s sampling and 18-bit A/D resolution
DC, 0.1Hz to 2MHz bandwidth
CMRR performance of 80dB/100kHz
Diverse array of sensors from 10mA to 1000A
6CH per unit, 12CH when synchronizing 2 power analyzers
Improve Power Conversion
Efficiency and Minimize Loss
Compensate current sensor phase error with 0.01° resolution
Harmonic analysis up to 1.5 MHz
User-defined calculation and Circuit impedance analysis
FFT analysis up to 2MHz
Large capacity waveform storage up to 1MWord x 6CH
MATLAB toolkit support
(MATLAB is a registered trademark of Mathworks Inc.)
www.hioki.com/pw6001
os-com@hioki.co.jp
Ceramic Dielectric Capacitors
SRT Microceramique, a French MLCC manufacturer introduces its
new P (N2T) ceramic dielectric capacitors which presents many
breakthroughs compared to COG/NP0 or X7R capacitors.
1 Excellent behaviour under high voltage, compared to X7R (Cap
loss between 5% and 18% depending of the thickness of the ceramic
layer) allows to implement this capacitor in snubber circuits.
2 The dielectric constant of 450 gives the possibility to offer a cap
range from 100pF to 1μF for voltages from 500V to 5kV in standard
sizes (1812-2220-2225-2825-3033-4040-5440-6660)
3 Excellent thermal behaviour under high current with the DF less
than 5x10-4
4 Can be used in High Temperature applications, over 240°C with a
cap loss around 30% compared to 70% for the X7R capacitors
«This new material will bring a lot of innovations in the field of high
power, high frequency and high temperature applications and SRT-
MC is proud to contribute at this technology step» said Daniel Delattre,
Technical Director of SRT-MC.
www.srt-microceramique.com
ABB Semiconductor C3+25
APEC 61
APEX Microtechnology 35
CDE 19
Danfoss 43
Dr.-Ing. Seibt 47
ECCE EPE 63
electronic concepts 1
Fuji Electric Europe 29
GvA
C2
Hioki 64
Advertising Index
Hitachi 9
Hollmén 49
Infineon
C4
ICE Components 59
ITPR 42
LEM 5
Malico 41
Mitsubishi 13
Mornsun 47
Payton 15
PCIM Asia 55
Plexim 11
Recom Power 37
Rohm 7
Semikron 21
SMT 53
STM 23+31
USCi 39
Vincotech 27
Würth 3
64
Bodo´s Power Systems ® February 2017 www.bodospower.com

—
Let’s write the future
with low-priced, high-performance
small thyristors.
With ABB Semiconductors’ optimized small phase control thyristors (PCTs),
we now offer very competitive products for voltage classes ranging from 1800
to 6500 V and current ratings from 380 to 1660 A in D and F housings (34- and
47-millimeter pole-piece diameters). ABB’s complete range of thyristors includes
PCTs, bidirectionally controlled thyristors (BCTs), and fast thyristors with ratings
of 1600 to 8500 V and 350 to 6100 A. abb.com/semiconductors

Innovative power modules with TIM
Simplified mounting – lowest thermal resistance
Infineon completes its portfolio of power modules with pre-applied thermal interface material
IGBT Modules
› EasyPIM
› EasyPACK
Thyristor / Diode Modules
› 60 mm PowerBLOCK
› 50 mm EcoBLOCK
Benefits
› Reduced process time in manufacturing
› Optimized thermal management
› Increased system reliability and lifetime
› Improved handling in mounting and
maintenance
www.infineon.com/TIM