There’s a lot of benefits that come with silicon carbide semiconductor devices. Increased power density, increased efficiency, lower form factor, simpler designs, simpler thermal management, are all examples of the benefits. But along with the things that silicon carbide enables, there’s also some side effects that make them hard to control, and if they’re not properly managed, can rear their ugly heads in designs.
With that in mind, Littelfuse developed evaluation kits aimed at helping design engineers overcome the hesitations they may have about implementing SiC in their designs.
In a recent video, Littelfuse’s Levi Gant took us through the features of these kits. One platform is for dynamic characterization of the SiC devices. It allows designers to evaluate the switching energy, switching times, gate charge, and other things of a similar nature. It’s minimally intrusive with its current and voltage measurements. It’s highly optimized to drive SiC devices accurately, so engineers can characterize the devices and get accurate readings.
Another platform Grant reviews is a gate driver evaluation platform. In a continuous switching environment, rather than just a single or a double-pulse test that would normally be used in the dynamic characterization, there’s a whole other set of concerns engineers need to be aware of. Areas of concern include how the gate drive IC performs, the behavior of the isolated power supply, and even the layout of the PCB itself. With this platform, engineers can quickly and fairly evaluate all those aspects head-to-head in a standardized way to give confidence that your comparisons are true.
Both of these platforms are being made available to customers as are reference designs published online. Designers will be able to download the design files, and send the files out to a PCB house. Littelfuse will give access to a full BOM, and designers will be able to make these evaluation kits at a fraction of the cost you may be able to buy them online from another vendor.
Applications for the Littelfuse SiC technology include EVs, solar applications, data center applications, and anywhere else where high-operating voltages, higher efficiency/lower form factor, and higher power density is important.
Littelfuse launched a web page that gives high-level detail about the eval kits, and more importantly links to free downloads of the design files so designers can create these boards for themselves.
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