Date of Graduation

8-2013

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering (MSEE)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Electrical Engineering

Advisor/Mentor

Ang, Simon S.

Committee Member

Balda, Juan C.

Second Committee Member

Brown, Randy L.

Keywords

Applied sciences; Parasitic inductance; Power electronics; Power module; Semiconductor devices

Abstract

A modern power electronic module can save significant energy usage in the power electronic systems by improving their switching efficiencies. One way to improve the efficiency of the power electronic module is to reduce its parasitic circuit elements. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the mitigation of parasitic circuit elements in power electronic modules. General methods of mitigating parasitic inductances were analyzed by the Q3D Extractor and verified by the time-domain reflectometry (TDR) measurements. In most cases, the TDR measurement results closely matched those predicted by the Q3D Extractor. These methods were applied to design and analyze a 50KVA 650V silicon carbide (SiC) half-bridge power electronic power module consisting of three separate power substrates interconnected in parallel. The layout of this power module was constrained by the existing module housing. The parasitic inductances of the power module substrates were measured by TDR, and compared to those simulated values by the Q3D Extractor. Due to the differences in the lengths of current paths, the parasitic circuit elements for the three paralleled SiC power substrates, each consisting of 10 SiC power MOSFETs and 9 SiC diodes, were different.

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