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SemiSouth
Laboratories Announces Efficiency Improvement in Solar Inverter with
SiC JFET
Enhancement-mode JFET eliminates
50% of
energy losses in power semiconductors
AUSTIN, Texas,
April 10, 2008
- SemiSouth
Laboratories, Inc. and the Center for Advanced Vehicle Systems (CAVS)
at Mississippi
State
University
announced today that SemiSouth's enhancement-mode silicon carbide (SiC)
Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) significantly improved the
efficiency
of an off-the-shelf inverter commonly used in residential and
commercial solar
power energy systems. CAVS
provided
guidance and precision test equipment required to measure and validate
the
efficiency improvement.
CAVS validated that by replacing the existing
silicon transistors with SemiSouth’s
enhancement-mode SiC JFETs - the inverter realized reduced losses in
the power semiconductors
by as much as 50%. Most
significantly,
CAVS used the JFETs as “drop-in” replacements for
the silicon devices, making
no design changes to the inverter before inserting the SemiSouth
components. The
grid connected, low-frequency isolated inverter, purchased from
commercial
inventory of a leading solar inverter provider, was designed with
conventional
silicon Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs).
Dr. Rand German, Director of CAVS and
Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MSU, said of this collaboration
“CAVS is
putting a major emphasis on positioning itself for a lead in automotive
power
electronics R&D. This result validates our belief that
developing and
testing applications for silicon carbide power electronics through our
partnership with SemiSouth is leading to breakthroughs in energy
efficiency.”
Beyond the dramatic reduction in both conduction and
switching losses, the
use of SiC JFETs as “drop-in” replacements to
achieve the efficiency gains is
unprecedented. Robin
Kelley, an
applications engineer for SemiSouth, said, "All that was necessary to
drop-in
the enhancement-mode JFETs was the addition of a few passive components
in the
control circuit to take into consideration the change in threshold
voltage
between the original IGBTs and these JFETs. We started the inverter and
it ran
without any problems." With
this
simple change, immediate improvement with respect to performance and
efficiency
were realized. This
serves to open the
door for additional modification to fully take advantage of the
SemiSouth
device that will yield additional improvements not only in performance
and
efficiency, but also in overall system reliability.
Dr.
Jeff Casady, SemiSouth’s
Chief Technical Officer, described the enhancement-mode SiC JFET as
"cheaper to produce, smaller than any comparable silicon or
silicon-carbide
transistor, and free of reliability concerns with gate-oxides that have
plagued
more conventional approaches to develop an enhancement-mode field
effect
transistor using silicon carbide."
This new
enhancement-mode JFET
can be used as a direct replacement for silicon MOSFET’s and
IGBT’s in
virtually any off-the-shelf converter or inverter design.
Vess Johnson, SemiSouth’s President and
CEO, said, " The fact that
the JFET’s can be used as a drop-in replacement means that
the barrier to entry
has been greatly reduced and that designers working with these devices
will be
able to see immediate performance and efficiency improvements and will
be able
to drive new and better products to market much faster.”
About SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc.
Founded in 2000, with
headquarters in Austin, Texas and manufacturing in Starkville, Mississippi,
SemiSouth is a privately held silicon carbide (SiC) based semiconductor
company. As an industry leader in the development and manufacture of SiC
electrical components and materials for high-power, high-efficiency,
harsh-environment power management applications, SemiSouth provides discrete
power devices, and SiC epiwafers.
SiC-based semiconductor devices offer significant advantages over
competing products based on silicon and other semiconductor materials for power
management applications.
SemiSouth and the
SemiSouth logo are trademarks of SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc. All other company
or product names are the registered trademarks or trademarks of their
respective owners. For more information, visit us on the website at http://www.semisouth.com
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