Silicon carbide (SiC) devices that facilitate high-voltage operations at low switching losses because of wide-bandgap (WBG) material start their accelerated evolution and adoption in automotive, industrial, aerospace, and defense applications. These SiC products promise to improve power density and system efficiency, thus saving the design’s size, cost, and weight.
The SiC semiconductor material can get heat out of the die quickly, and that’s a boon for power electronics, because it allows power designs to move from active to passive cooling. Power system designers can replace liquid cooling systems because the thermal conductivity of SiC is much better. Likewise, capacitance is much lower, and so are the switching losses.
That’s driving the adoption of SiC components in electric vehicles (EVs) and other high-power switching applications to boost power density, maximize system efficiency, and ensure high-temperature stability. The EVs are expected to move from 400-V to 800-V battery systems in the next three to five years…
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