ROHM 3rd Generation Automotive Grade SiC MOSFETs First Look Video

Welcome to First Look, brought to you by Digi-Key and ROHM Semiconductor. While the electric vehicle market has seen incredible growth in recent years, short driving range coupled with long charging times make them impractical for many consumers and fleet users. This has led EV makers to increase battery capacity while adopting higher power chargers to reduce charging times. ROHM’s 3rd generation AEC-Q101 silicon carbide MOSFETs make it possible to achieve both of these needs. EVs, in general, benefit from the low ON resistance and fast switching capabilities of SiC MOSFETs, resulting in significantly lower loss than IGBTs or silicon superjunction MOSFETs. For its 3rd generation SiC MOSFETs, ROHM switched to a trench gate structure. This translates to 50% lower ON resistance and 35% lower input capacitance in the same chip size compared to 2nd gen devices using a planar gate structure, resulting in even lower losses. To reduce charging time even with increased battery capacity, EV makers are using high power onboard chargers as high as 22kW. In these applications, the high power density of ROHM’s SiC MOSFETs helps designers keep size and weight to a minimum, as they have power ratings above 400W, are easy to use in parallel, and don’t require complex drive circuitry. Finally, to increase driving distance, EV makers are creating high capacity battery stacks with voltage ratings of 800V or more. This requires power semiconductors with an even higher withstand voltage. ROHM offers both 650V and 1200V variants of its 3rd generation SiC MOSFETs. These devices solidify ROHM’s position as the global leader in SiC manufacturing, utilizing a vertically integrated production process that drives quality at all stages of manufacturing, from raw wafer production to fully packaged devices and modules. See you next time on First Look.