Reliability Assessment of Hybrid Silicon-Silicon Carbide IGBT Implemented on an Inverter for Photo Voltaic Applications

Recent Advancements in the semiconductor technology leads to the use of Silicon Carbide (SiC) materials in the design of power switches due to its wide band gap that performs superior compared to conventional Silicon material. Nevertheless, the cost of manufacturing IGBT with the SiC material is of major concern. Hence, this article proposes a hybrid Si-SiC based IGBT to improve the performance and reliability. The hybrid Si-SiC IGBT consist of Si-IGBT with SiC Feedback Diode. A test case of 600V/30A hybrid Switch (Si-IGBT (IGW30N60H3)/SiC- diode (C3D20060D)) is considered and implemented on a 3 kW PV inverter. Mission Profile oriented reliability analysis is carried out using PLECS thermal model at two different atmospheric conditions and its effectiveness is evaluated in comparison with conventional Si IGBT. Monte Carlo simulation is implemented to calculate the B10 lifetime. The population size of 10000 with 5 % variation is considered. The improved B10 lifetime and reliability with the proposed hybrid Si-SiC IGBT is obtained at both India and Denmark locations.