Comparison and Reduction of Conducted EMI in SiC JFET and Si IGBT-Based Motor Drives

• Published in: IEEE transactions on power electronics 2014-04, Vol.29 (4), p.1757-1767
• Main Authors: Gong, Xun, Ferreira, Jan Abraham
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Circuits; Comparative analysis; Electric noise; Electrical engineering. Electrical power engineering; Electrical machines; Electromagnetic compatibility; Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC); Electromagnetic interference; electromagnetic interference (EMI); Electronics; Exact sciences and technology; filter; Information, signal and communications theory; insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT); Insulated gate bipolar transistors; Inverters; JFETs; Logic gates; motor drive; Other multijunction devices. Power transistors. Thyristors; Regulation and control; Semiconductor electronics. Microelectronics. Optoelectronics. Solid state devices; Silicon carbide; silicon carbide (SiC) junction field-effect transistor (JFET); Switches; Telecommunications and information theory; Transistors
• ISSN: 0885-8993; 1941-0107
• DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2013.2271301

This paper compares the conducted electromagnetic interference (EMI) in Si insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and silicon carbide (SiC) junction field-effect transistor (JFET) based motor drives. Two inverters, with the SiC and Si transistors, respectively, are built using the same circuit layout and investigated accordingly. Their conducted EMI levels are compared under the conditions of without filter and with traditional common mode (CM) filters. Reasons of the exhibited different noise emissions are analyzed. To verify the discussions, two inverters are tested in the CM. This allows for the identification and analysis of their maximized CM and differential mode (DM) wave shapes. It is shown that the excited parasitic oscillations during the switching transients are magnified more in the SiC JFET inverter, which is the main cause of the noise difference. Lastly, improved filtering solutions are proposed, which effectively suppressed the increased high-frequency noise due to the faster SiC switching speed.