$eta$-Ga2O3 in Power Electronics Converters: Opportunities & Challenges

$eta$-Ga2O3 in Power Electronics Converters: Opportunities & Challenges

Blog Article

In this work, the possibility of using different generations of $eta$-Ga2O3 as an ultra-wide-bandgap power semiconductor device for high power converter applications is explored.The competitiveness of $eta$-Ga2O3 for power converters in still not well quantified, for which the major determining factors are the on-state resistance, $R_{ ext{ON}}$, reverse blocking voltage, $V_{ ext{BR}}$, and the thermal resistance, $R_{ ext{th}}$.We have used the best reported device specifications from literature, both in terms of reports wac 4011 of experimental measurements and potential demonstrated by computer-aided designs, to study power converter performance for different device generations.Modular multilevel converter-based voltage source converters are identified as a topology with significant potential to exploit these device characteristics.The performance of MVDC & HVDC converters based on this topology have been analysed, focusing on system level power losses and case temperature rise at the device level.

Comparisons of these $eta$-Ga2O3 devices are la rams crop top made against contemporary SiC-FET and Si-IGBTs.The results have indicated that although the early $eta$-Ga2O3 devices are not competitive to incumbent Si-IGBT and SiC-FET modules, the latest experimental measurements on NiO$_mathrm{X}$/$eta$-Ga2O3 and $eta$-Ga2O3/diamond significantly surpass the performance of incumbent modules.Furthermore, parameters derived from semiconductor-level simulations indicate that the $eta$-Ga2O3/diamond in superjunction structures delivers even superior performance in these power converters.