A Compact, Automated Sawyer-Tower System for Characterization of the High-Frequency, Soft-Switching C_oss Loss of Wide Bandgap Devices

This paper presents a novel implementation of the Sawyer-Tower system for characterizing the large-signal C<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">oss</inf> loss of power semiconductor devices, enhanced to be cost-effective, compact, and fully automated. The system integrates a hybrid class D converter, a control and signal generation system, and programmable test equipment to measure C<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">oss</inf> losses based on user inputs to a Python script. The resulting characterization values show strong alignment with previous literature, but with a system that demonstrates more than tenfold reduction in cost, time, and space. This system significantly enhances accessibility for rapid, large-scale characterization of C<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">oss</inf> loss across various drain waveform parameters, including frequency, voltage amplitude, $\frac{{dV}}{{dt}}$, and waveform shape.