A Study on Optimized SiC Half Bridge Through PCB Embedding

To demonstrate the benefits of advanced PCB manufacturing technologies in power electronics, this study presents a PCB embedded SiC half bridge design and compares its switching transients with the conventional SiC package design. The presented PCB embedded design stands out as a compact design, occupying nearly 40 % less space compared to the conventional design. The silver sintered die attached copper lead frame, low thermal resistivity prepreg, and copper filled laser microvias provide an effective thermal conductivity between die and the cooling side of the PCB. The compact design also ensures the power loop inductance below 1.5nH at 1MHz and, compared to conventional SiC package design, offers five times less parasitic PCB capacitance. The experimental results show that the switching speed of the designs are 19 V/ns and 15 V/ns during turn on transients, and 8 V/ns for both during turn off transients. The lower overshoot stress and faster damped ringing in PCB embedded design contribute to the reduction of the switching losses.