Mitsubishi Electric Develops Technology for High-power-density Converters

Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has announced that it has developed a new technology to integrate power devices, passives, sensors and other embedded components in the same substrate, which the company deployed in a 100kW (continuous) bidirectional DC-DC converter to achieve what is believed to be the world’s most power-dense power converter, rated at 136kW/L, or eight times more power dense than conventional converters.

The new technology is expected to contribute to the downsizing of power electronics equipment.

Mitsubishi Electric’s new integration technology enables the parasitic inductance of the switching current loop to be reduced to less than 1/10th that of conventional converters.

The resulting clean switching allows high-speed commutation for high-operating frequencies in silicon-carbide (SiC) metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The technology leads to considerably smaller passive components, such as reactors for current smoothing, and capacitors, which take up much space in DC-DC converters.