High-temperature electro-ceramics and their application to SiC power modules

Abstract This paper presents the research achievement in Japan to develop highly-refractive electro-ceramics for application to silicon carbide (SiC) power modules such as heat-resistive passive components (snubber capacitors and resistors), metalised substrates, ceramic circuit boards, and high-temperature packaging technologies. To enable the operation of SiC devices at high temperatures, the ability to withstand 250 °C and temperature cycle between −40 and 250 °C must be ensured for all the ceramic components and packaging technologies. For the passive components, the following properties were achieved, which would enable the operation of SiC devices at high switching speeds and high temperatures: low-resistance resistors which exhibit a resistance variation of less than 2% over a temperature range of −40 to 250 ℃ and with almost no variation at frequencies of less than 10 MHz; multi-layered ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) with a capacitance variation of less than ± 10% within the above-mentioned temperature range and with high self-resonant frequencies of about 10 MHz. In addition, Cu-metalised ceramic substrates using high thermal conductive Si3N4 (180 W /(m·K)) and ceramic circuit boards produced using a co-firing process were developed. It was shown that prototype SiC power modules (2-in-1 structure) fabricated using the developed ceramic components could be operated at 225 °C, while exhibiting a high switching speed, 10–20 times faster than that of conventional Si IGBT (150 °C operation).