“Wide bandgap technology enables devices to perform more efficiently at a greater range of temperatures than conventional semiconductor materials,” said ORNL’s Madhu Chinthavali, who led the Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Group on this project. “This is especially useful in a power inverter, which is the heart of an electric vehicle.”
“With additive manufacturing, complexity is basically free, so any shape or grouping of shapes can be imagined and modeled for performance,” Chinthavali said. “We’re very excited about where we see this research headed.”
Using additive manufacturing, researchers optimized the inverter’s heat sink, allowing for better heat transfer throughout the unit. This construction technique allowed them to place lower-temperature components close to the high-temperature devices, further reducing the electrical losses and reducing the volume and mass of the package.
Another key to the success is a design that incorporates several small capacitors connected in parallel to ensure better cooling and lower cost compared to fewer, larger and more expensive “brick type” capacitors.
The research group’s first prototype, a liquid-cooled all-silicon carbide traction drive inverter, features 50 percent printed parts. Initial evaluations confirmed an efficiency of nearly 99 percent, surpassing DOE’s power electronics target and setting the stage for building an inverter using entirely additive manufacturing techniques.
Building on the success of this prototype, researchers are working on an inverter with an even greater percentage of 3-D printed parts that’s half the size of inverters in commercially available vehicles. Chinthavali, encouraged by the team’s results, envisions an inverter with four times the power density of their prototype.
Source: ORNL