Experimental Demonstration of 1200V IGBT Module for a Magnetic Energy Recovery Switch Application

Abstract

A bi-directional magnetic energy recovery switch (MERS) having a bridge configuration with four IGBTs has the feature that a power factor correction is possible regardless of the impedance and power frequency of the load by the automatic synchronized switching. For this application, a new 1200V IGBT module has been successfully designed and fabricated, for the first time. Since the switching frequency in the MERS application is so slow of 50-60 Hz that a lower forward voltage drop characteristic is strongly required for the IGBT and FWD chips even though their fast switching features are sacrificed. Therefore, the superior characteristics of lower on-state voltage drop of 1.54 V in the IGBT chip and 1.20 V in the FWD one can be attained and, as a result of this, total power dissipation can be successfully reduced by approximately more than 40% when compared to the conventional PWM converter application.