Microchip Technology announced the collaboration with Mersen on their 150 kVA three-phase Silicon Carbide Power Stack Reference Design. Mersen SiC Power Stack reference designs help inverter designers save time and confusion in selecting individual components and can benefit from a solution that is pre-designed for their specific application, while Microchip uses this Power Stack to penetrate certain market segments with their SiC power chips, modules, and SiC gate drivers.

The Power Stack Reference Design provides 16 kW/l of power density and up to 130°C Tj, peak efficiency at 98 %, with up to 20 kHz switching frequency. All components are placed on a liquis-cooled cold plate . Utilizing SiC MOSFETs and configurable digital gate drivers, the reference design enables engineers to select from 700V and 1200V options in currents up to 750 A. Microchip also provides a choice in module construction including baseplate material, DBC ceramic material and die attach method. “We worked closely with Microchip on the design and development of this Power Stack Reference Design given the availability of highly robust Silicon Carbide MOSFETs and compatible digital gate drivers from a single source,” said Philippe Roussel, Global Strategic Marketing Executive Expert at Mersen. “Thus, we can demonstrate our ability to optimize any inverter topologies from our customers, relying on our line of bus bars, capacitors, fuses and cooling systems. The versatile Microchip Silicon Carbide line-up also gives us the capacity to extend these primary specifications to higher voltage, current and switching frequency to meet every customer’s operating point needs.”

Based upon an already existing electrical design and schematics, Mersen teams will jointly discuss the possible design optimization paths, over the 4 key constituent parts of your Inverter/Stack: Cooling, Busbar, Fuse and Capacitors in order to address the most-wanted requirements (efficiency, switching frequency, high T° constraint, size/weight limitation, cost). This will impact the choice and design of each and every components as well as the selection of the appropriate material (Copper, aluminum, dielectric, polymer) in a interdependence way. For other surrounding components (Gate Drivers, Resistors, Magnetics, power modules) Mersen has already established close collaborations with reputed suppliers such as Microchip who can also be part of the co-design team, beside Mersen engineers. Mersen is using tool-set of simulation software in order to compute any designs in all physical dimensions: Mechanical, Thermal, Electrical, Electromagnetics. These tools allow us to anticipate the multi-physics interactions between all the components and thus, to select each-other in an optimal mix. For small and medium series, Mersen also offers an assembly service to build individual inverter/stack.

In addition to the products in Mersen’s Power Stack Reference Design, Microchip is a provider of other Silicon Carbide power solutions including MOSFETs and Schottky Barrier diodes from 650 V to 1700 V, available in bare die and a variety of discrete and multi-chip module packages.Microchip unifies in-house die production with its low-inductance power packaging and digital gate drivers. These devices pair well with a comprehensive portfolio of microcontrollers (MCUs), analog and MCU peripherals, plus communication, wireless and security technology, providing system designers across many applications with total system solutions.

The company`s AgileSwitch 2ASC-12A1HP 1200V dual-channel digital gate driver with Augmented Switching™ technology is production qualified and fully configurable. The 2ASC-12A1HP gate driver and next-generation 2ASC-12A2HP are supported by a free-of-charge download Intelligent Configuration Tool (ICT), an interface allowing users to configure gate driver parameters including the gate switching profiles, system critical monitors and controller interface settings. AS

www.Microchip.com/SiC, https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/DS-SiC-Power-Stack-Reference-Designs-Mersen-MCHP.pdf