Design and manufacturing of liquid-cooled SiC power modules for EV applications

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The development of Electric Vehicles (EV) is one of the key measures to combat the accelerating climate change. The opportunity to develop the Canadian EV industry is better than ever. Provincial and Federal governments are investing "hundreds of millions" of dollars to create new jobs, stirring hopes to put Canada on the map as EV manufacturers. While much of the initial focus is placed on the manufacturing of low cost, high-capacity batteries, there are plenty of market space to develop complementary automotive parts. Researchers at the University of Toronto Electric Vehicle (UTEV) Research Centre, in partnership with Dana Canada Corporation (Oakville, ON) and Dana TM4 (Boucherville, QC), propose to design and develop manufacturing techniques for high performance liquid-cooled Silicon-Carbide (SiC) intelligent power modules (IMPs). Building on existing know how, UTEV plans to scale up the direct die bonding techniques for Gallium-Nitride (GaN) power modules, developed previously with Dana Canada, to build liquid-cooled SiC power modules capable of delivering more than 100 kW for the EV's charging and drive systems. Some of the challenges to overcome include the development of direct bonding techniques such as metal brazing and silver sintering, to provide low thermal resistance and high reliability. In addition, the physical layout and structure of the IMPs has conflicting requirements for the optimization of electrical and thermal performance. The development of smart gate driver ICs can also adds novel features such as digital interface, Electro-Magnetic Interference (EMI) suppression, aging and health monitoring to the IMPs. UTEV plans to demonstrate the implementation of high efficiency power converters using these SiC IMP prototypes. Theses power converters will also be installed on UTEV's EV rolling chassis to evaluate the real-world drive cycle performance. At the same time, Dana Canada will ensure that the fabrication techniques are compatible with the stringent automotive manufacturing requirements.