Comparison of SiC and eGaN devices in a 6.78 MHz 2.2 kW resonant inverter for wireless power transfer

This paper presents a performance comparison of two wide band gap (WBG) devices, a silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET and an enhancement mode gallium nitride (eGaN) FET in a resonant inverter operating at 6.78 MHz for wireless power transfer (WPT) applications. While SiC MOSFETs provide high breakdown voltage and good thermal characteristics, eGaN FETs can reduce gate losses due to small gate resistance and input capacitance. In this work, we compare a 1200 V SiC MOSFET in a single-ended class Φ₂ inverter to two 650 V eGaN FETs in a push-pull class Φ₂ inverter. We designed and implemented a 6.78 MHz 2.2 kW single-ended class Φ2 inverter using a 1200 V customized SiC MOSFET with low-inductance package. In our experiments, the inverter has a 93% efficiency and 2.2 kW output power with input voltage of 440 V. We also implemented a push-pull class Φ2 inverter using two 650 V eGaN FETs at 6.78 MHz. The push-pull class Φ2 inverter reduces the input current ripple because of interleaving operation. At 200 V input voltage, the push-pull inverter with two eGaN FETs provides output power of 2 kW with 96% efficiency. In order to reduce a volume and weight of the inverter, we implemented a class Φ2 inverter with 3D printed inductors.