Characteristics Evaluation of SiC MOSFET in DC Circuit Breaker

In order to evaluate the characteristics of SiC MOSFET under the mission profile of DC Circuit Breaker (DCCB), a complete DCCB test platform considering the RCD transfer loop and the MOV absorption loop is set up. Based on this platform, single and repetitive short-circuit interrupting experiments are carried out. Through these tests, the characteristics evaluation of 1200V/66A SiC MOSFET under DCCB is tested and analyzed. The aging test results are given. DCCB has its unique mission profile (interruption of large short-circuit current, fast current transfer, etc.), and the characteristics evaluation of SiC MOSFET in DCCB is necessary. For the single tests, the maximum interrupted current is 2.02 times the rated current. For the repetitive tests, the number of interruptions exceeds 2000 times and the interruption boundary is 2004 times under 1.85 times rated current. The failure causes of the devices in two cases are drain thermal failure and gate-source short circuit respectively. After 2000 experiments, the interruption time of DCCB increased significantly, and the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$I_{\text{dss}}, V_{\text{gs}(\text{th})}$</tex>, and <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$R_{\text{ds}(\text{on})}$</tex> of the device increased by about 53.36%, 4.29%, and 16.94% respectively.