Semiconductor power switches are critical components in power conversion for a wide variety of high efficiency and clean energy applications including electric vehicles, renewable energy generation, energy storage, solid-state circuit breakers and motor drives.
Improving the efficiency and performance of semiconductor power switch components can have wide benefits, improving the economics and accelerating deployment of these applications.
Ideal Power has received over 70 patents worldwide for the topology and method of operation of a new kind of semiconductor power switch, which we call a Bidirectional Bipolar Junction Transistor (B-TRANTM), a novel four quadrant power switch with ultra-low forward voltage and low switching losses that can be used in both unidirectional and bidirectional switching applications.
B-TRANTM offers a significant performance improvement over conventional powerswitchessuch as SCRs,
IGBTs and MOSFETs, as implemented in silicon or wide-band-gap materials such as silicon carbide. 0.6V VCE(on) at 30A load current has been demonstrated in silicon with driving power of 8.4W (1.2V x 7A). The total power loss is 26.4W, which is much lower than IGBTs.
Click BTRAN-White-Paper-05716660.pdf (idealpower.com) for details.
