Global awareness of climate change and increasing energy prices have led to massive research in the area of sustainability, electrification and decarbonization. In this regard, during the last decades, the electrified vehicle (EV) market has been rapidly growing. It is anticipated that EVs will take over 35% of the entire car market by 2040. Semiconductor power modules are core components of power electronics in EVs. The current trends, and main considerations, when designing a power electronics conversion system is to achieve high system efficiency and power density and to ensure reduced system size and cost. It is also important to ensure high switching frequency operation capability.
To meet these targets, high-performance automotive-qualified power semiconductor devices are required. Generally, the overall performance of the automotive module is determined by the semiconductor properties. It is commonly known that SiC-based power devices are the best choice in applications where high-power densities, high efficiency and high reliability are required. Indeed, SiC material allows realization of power devices with improved characteristics compared to Si-based devices with the same blocking voltage capability. For instance, SiC MOSFETs feature low on-state resistance, high switching speed, high voltage-blocking capability and high working temperature. Moreover, these devices have low body-diode reverse recovery current, low parasitic capacitances, and no tail recovery current. This leads to improved system performance in terms of power losses. These advantages, and many others, make SiC MOSFETs an increasingly interesting technology in high frequency, high voltage, automotive power modules.

With the strong growth of EV markets worldwide, MOSFET technologies are also evolving at break-neck speeds. Recently, several academic and industrial research works were elaborated to investigate SiC technologies in depth and take full advantage of their strong capabilities, particularly, in automotive applications. Currently, two main SiC MOSFET Technologies dominate the market. The Planar SiC MOSFET, which was commercialized in 2011 and is still the dominant MOSFET structure up today. It has the same cross-sectional structure as the structure of vertical double-diffused MOSFET in Si technology. And, the Trench MOSFET, which is an alternative structure with advantages of smaller cell pitch resulting in higher packing density and low ON-resistance.

Infineon Technologies is one of the lead manufacturers of semiconductor power devices and it has continuously taken part in the investigations of SiC MOSFET technologies. Recently, Infineon has also introduced its CoolSiC™ MOSFET trench concept, based on which several discrete devices and automotive power modules were developed. Amongst these modules we distinguish the second generation CoolSiC™ HybridPACKTM Drive (HPD Gen2), which is a pioneering power module in the automotive industry. By incorporating Infineon’s latest CoolSiC™ G2 technology, the latter offers higher power with a better power to cost ratio and benchmark power cycling capability compared to its first generation. Moreover, it offers several package enhancements such as Rivet, Heat stake Domes, PinFin Baseplate, phase current sensors modules, and much more.

This paper presents an experimental comparative evaluation of different Si-based and SiC-based automotive power modules in terms of efficiency. For this purpose, a laboratory inverter system was set up and integrated into an electric motor test bench. The latter consists of two mechanically coupled permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) with independent control loops for speed and torque. The set-up can be operated in both motor and generator operation modes. The main objective is to highlight the high performance of Infineon’s HPD G2 SiC-MOSFET based power modules in terms of efficiency. In the following section II, we will thoroughly present the test bench and the test conditions and provide the experimental results for three different types of automotive power modules. The investigated modules are the FS01MR08A8MA2LBC (SiC-MOSFET based HPD G2), FS03MR12A6MA1B (Si-IGBT based HPD G1), both from Infineon, and another commercially available Si-IGBT automotive power module. A comparative evaluation of these power modules in terms of efficiency, under the same operating conditions, is also provided. In section III, we will present numerical simulation results of three different vehicle models under real driving cycle profiles to further empathize the capability of CoolSiC™ G2 based automotive power modules in terms of achieving high system efficiency. Finally, we finish with some concluding remarks.