Design and Testing of 1 kV H-bridge Power Electronics Building Block Based on 1.7 kV SiC MOSFET Module

This paper presents a power electronics building block (PEBB) design based on 1.7 kV SiC MOSFET power modules. The PEBB power stage is an H-bridge circuit that can be cascaded to build modular converters. The evolution of PEBB architectures is introduced at the beginning and the specifications are given, followed by the design considerations and solutions of critical PEBB components. In particular, laminated DC bus, differential-mode inductor, smart gate driver, high noise-immunity digital control system, and DC-fed auxiliary power supply have been accomplished and demonstrated. Finally, a novel hybrid-current-mode switching-cycle control approach has been proposed and validated on a SiC-PEBB-based modular multilevel Buck converter (MMBC).