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In his interview, Knoll discusses his concern for the environment and his desire to contribute positively to the fight against the climate crisis. "I know that electric vehicles will help with the clean energy movement and I love electrical engineering, so I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.”

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In this work, the PCB-embedded 1.2 kV SiC MOSFET half-bridge module with integrated gate drive circuitry seen in Fig. 1 was designed and analyzed for use in a 22 kW electric vehicle on-board charger (OBC). The die embedding was performed by AT&S using their PlAnaR Surface-Embedded Component (PARSEC) technique which allows for gate and source electrical connections to be made with copper-filled microvias. The design methodology used to create this module is based on understanding the tradeoffs between thermal and electrical performance in PCB-embedding and using that knowledge to achieve the performance required by this application. To minimize the thermal resistance of the FR4 layers, microvias were used to connect the source-side and drain-side inner layers to their outer layer counterparts. 4 oz and 3 oz copper layers were used for the inner and outer layers, respectively, to balance the tradeoff be-tween heat spreading and gate drive manufacturability. The gate drive circuitry was integrated to reduce loop inductances.

Following the design and manufacturing, the PCB-embedded half-bridge modules were experimentally tested to measure their performance. The source-side and drain-side junction-to-case thermal resistances were measured to be 0.41 K/W and 0.17 K/W, respectively, using the JEDEC 51-14 standard and a Phase 12 B Thermal Analyzer. Under similar operating conditions, the PCB-embedded half-bridge module achieved 5.6 times lower voltage overshoot during turn-off and 0.5% higher efficiency than a TO-247 package containing the same SiC MOSFET. With the help of soft switching and low loop inductances, the measured peak efficiency and power density of the 22-kW three-phase ac-dc converter prototype with six PCB-embedded half-bridge modules seen in Fig. 2 are 98.2 % and 182 W/in ³, respectively.

The experimental results obtained in this work provide evidence that PCB-embedding is a viable packaging method for use in electric vehicle OBCs. The integrability, power density, and thermal and electrical performance afforded by PCB-embedding makes it a great candidate as a packaging method for SiC MOSFETs. The large-scale adoption of PCB-embedding in power converters hinges on reducing manufacturing costs and gaining a better understanding of the failure mechanisms seen in power and thermal cycling.

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A PCB-Embedded 1.2 kV SiC Half-Bridge Module for EV On-Board Charger Applications

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In this work, the PCB-embedded 1.2 kV SiC MOSFET half-bridge module with integrated gate drive circuitry seen in Fig. 1 was designed and analyzed for use in a 22 kW electric vehicle on-board charger (OBC). The die embedding was performed by AT&S using their PlAnaR Surface-Embedded Component (PARSEC) technique which allows for gate and source electrical connections to be made with copper-filled microvias.

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Jack Knoll is a St. Louis native with research and development experience in undergraduate and graduate engineering laboratories. His research on onboard chargers for electric vehicles has been recognized on the state and national levels, and has been published by Electrical Conversion Congress & Exposition (ECCE), the Applied Power Electronics Conference, and the TPEL Journal.

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When his lab was shut down because of Covid, Knoll took that time as an opportunity to expand his knowledge and run software simulations on silicon carbide MOSFETs (metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor). This work gained him attention from several notable companies that specialize in applications of electrical engineering, notably PowerAmerica and Lockheed Martin. Knoll was offered a summer research position in Lockheed’s Missile and Fire Control division, and applied his work to weapons and guidance systems.

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For the onboard charger of an electric vehicle, he developed a package that was streamlined and required one fabrication step, rather than the standard of multiple manufacturing steps, increasing the practicality of manufacturing the charger on a larger scale.