Design and Testing of a High Temperature Inverter

The emergence of wide band gap devices has pushed the boundaries of power converter operations and high power density applications. The wide band gap devices in conjunction with silicon on insulator electronic components enable the realization of power converters that can operate at high ambient temperatures that are typically found in aerospace engine environments. This paper describes the design and test of a power electronic inverter that converts a fixed input DC voltage to a variable voltage variable frequency three phase output. The design of the key functional components such as the gate drive, power module, controller and communication will be discussed in this paper. Test results for the inverter at high temperature are also presented.