A Configuration of 3-phase Traction Inverter Employing {SiC} Devices

In the scenario of a more and more sustainable society, an increasing electrification in different fields, such as mobility and industrial applications, is foreseen in the next decades. As far as power electronics is concerned, a challenging perspective is represented by achieving higher and higher switching frequencies while maintaining high voltage and low power losses. To do that, emerging semiconductor technologies are supposed to be increasingly employed, as well as innovative topologies of connections among switching devices. Among them, the cascode configuration can notably contribute to achieve high levels of dV/dt without losing efficiency. In this paper, a 3-phase Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) inverter based on a cascode connection for each of its six switches is proposed and some promising experimental results are provided. SiC technology has been used for each power device, while a normally-off/normally-on combination of switching devices has been selected to implement the cascode-based switch.