Samsung Picks Infineon for Refrigerator Inverter Design
Infineon Technologies has decided to supply Samsung Electronics with power devices to couple the highest energy efficiency with the lowest audible noise.
They have been integrated into Samsung’s brand new one-door fridge (RR23A2J3XWX, RR23A2G3WDX) and FDR (French Door Fridge: RF18A5101SR) inventarized refrigerator.
“Up to now, the major home appliances market was strongly dominated by modules. It was exciting to see that with our leading MOSFET technologies, we could help our customer Samsung to achieve even higher efficiency levels at lower system cost in such applications”, said Stefan Obersriebnig, Product Line Head High Voltage Conversion of Infineon’s Power & Sensor System Division.
Inverterization is an emerging DC to AC conversion trend in contemporary inverter designs. It helps the application run more quietly and smoothly while the average power consumption is reduced compared to traditional on/off control.
To meet Samsung’s requirements towards improved efficiency and lower system cost together with a lower noise level, the Digi Touch Cool, Curd Maestro features multiple power solutions from Infineon – EiceDRIVER gate-driver IC, CoolSET Gen 5 for AC/DC conversion, and 600 V CoolMOS PFD7 for compressor drives. This is Samsung’s first refrigerator design that uses discrete devices instead of power modules in the compressor.
The 600 V CoolMOS PFD7 super junction MOSFETs come with a best-in-class body diode allowing for improved soft-recovery index and the industry’s fastest reverse recovery time (trr), making them a perfect choice for home appliance motor drives.
Compared to module-based designs, using MOSFETs enables lower energy consumption especially at light-load conditions and an efficiency increase of 1.7 percent. In addition, this innovative approach allows for a heatsink-less design, a 10 percent reduction in system cost and a longer refrigerator lifetime.
