PI’s innovative switching power supply integrated with SiC simplifies the design of emergency power supply for electric vehicles

““Automotive is an entire new marketplace for us and this new InnoSwitch-AQ with built-in 1700V SiC actually opens the door for us to assist EV purposes with 800 V bus battery voltage. We have now experience in excessive voltage , can present a really small, dependable, easy and low-power answer to make sure that the battery doesn't self-discharge.” PI CEO Balu Balakrishnan stated on the corporate’s 2021 earnings name.

“

“Automotive is an entire new marketplace for us and this new InnoSwitch-AQ with built-in 1700V SiC actually opens the door for us to assist EV purposes with 800 V bus battery voltage. We have now experience in excessive voltage , can present a really small, dependable, easy and low-power answer to make sure that the battery doesn't self-discharge.” PI CEO Balu Balakrishnan stated on the corporate’s 2021 earnings name.

The primary switching energy provide IC with built-in SiC

As the electrical automobile market continues to be sizzling, as an professional within the discipline of high-voltage/low-voltage conversion, PI has additionally successively tried many merchandise to enter the electrical automobile market. The brand new InnoSwitch™ 3-AQ merchandise are AEC-Q100 certified and are the business’s first automotive-grade switching energy provide ICs utilizing silicon carbide (SiC) main switching MOSFETs. The brand new IC can present as much as 70W of output energy and is especially utilized in emergency energy purposes for 600V and 800V pure battery and gas cell passenger vehicles, electrical buses, and vans.

In truth, with the pursuit of energy and effectivity in electrical automobiles, the bus voltage is shifting from 400V to high-voltage bus techniques of 600V, 800V or much more than 1000V, enabling bigger battery packs, greater charging effectivity, and fewer Loss and whole weight of the harness. On the similar time, it must be famous that sooner or later, the 400V bus voltage and 800V will coexist, which signifies that the 2 conditions should be strengthened on the similar time when designing the general energy provide platform of the automobile.

Immediately, with the large software of the third-generation semiconductors represented by SiC and GaN out there, because of its distinctive benefits in face up to voltage, frequency, and warmth resistance, it has an influence density far exceeding that of conventional silicon. , and decrease losses, so it has shortly grow to be the darling of latest power automobiles. The principle energy components of electrical automobiles, together with inverters, frequency converters, and OBCs, have already or try to make use of third-generation semiconductors.

PI’s integration of SiC into switching energy provides opens a brand new period for SiC within the automotive market. Yan Jinguang, senior technical coaching supervisor of PI, stated that the 1700V face up to voltage of the SiC mosfet can adapt to all present and future electrical automobile emergency energy provide designs with excessive busbar voltage.

As a result of its energy system, management system, battery administration system, and so on. are all pushed by electrical energy, electrical automobiles have stricter necessities for failure, together with ISO26262, and so on., which require automobiles to be outfitted with emergency energy techniques to provide energy in conventional 12V batteries. When the system fails, the emergency energy provide can provide energy to the automobile management system and drive system and different gadgets.

Yan Jinguang, senior technical coaching supervisor of PI, stated {that a} set of emergency energy provide within the conventional discrete answer requires about 100 elements, however after adopting the PI answer, the variety of elements will be lowered by half, which simplifies the design, reduces the board space, and reduces the BOM. Considerably enhance the ability density and reliability of the ability provide, as well as, it will probably additionally alleviate the procurement challenges confronted by the massive variety of elements.

InnoSwitch3-AQ Evaluation

As proven within the determine, InnoSwitch3-AQ integrates 1700V SiC excessive voltage change, QR/CCM flyback controller, synchronous rectification and bolstered insulation suggestions circuit FluxLink (as much as 5000V excessive voltage), thus realizing secondary aspect detection and management on a single chip . Within the conventional emergency energy provide design, as a result of low reliability of the optocoupler, many designers usually undertake the design of the first voltage regulation scheme, and its accuracy is drastically affected by the load situations and the tolerance of peripheral elements. On this means, one other degree of DC-DC regulator must be added on the output finish, which won't solely enhance the variety of system elements, but additionally have an effect on the general system effectivity. PI’s secondary voltage regulation answer can obtain a extra correct voltage output, thereby saving prices and bettering effectivity.

Product and system benefits

Particular to the benefits, Yan Jinguang gave an evaluation from some great benefits of the product itself and some great benefits of the system.

The product has assist for 30V-1200V large voltage enter, synchronous rectification is realized

And thru a sequence of excessive integration and glorious options, to attain system-level benefits.

To start with, its secondary aspect detection achieves high-precision output, which may obtain steady energy provide with out rear pole LDO or DC/DC, cut back output capacitance, and assist a number of outputs on the similar time.

Secondly, the built-in FluxLink magnetic coupling expertise can change the normal optocoupler isolation communication.

As well as, Yan Jinguang stated that in contrast with the earlier built-in 750V InnoSwitch3-AQ, the brand new answer can assist high-voltage battery techniques with out the necessity for an exterior StackFET voltage divider.

Peter Vaughan, director of automotive enterprise growth at Energy Integrations, stated: “800V batteries have gotten customary in electrical automobiles. A number of automobile techniques are linked to this highly effective energy supply, however the delicate Electronic management circuits solely require a couple of volts to function and talk. A circuit utilizing InnoSwitch gadgets can use a small board space and safely draw a small quantity of power from the primary bus for the management circuit with out losing power.”

PI has launched two emergency energy provide reference designs utilizing 1700V InnoSwitch3-AQ, as proven within the determine

Along with automotive purposes, PI additionally integrates SiC into InnoSwitch3-EP merchandise for industrial energy purposes with greater enter voltage necessities, together with robots, welding machines, Three-Phase electrical energy meters, and industrial motors.

Broad portfolio of automotive-grade merchandise

Along with the 1700V InnoSwitch3-AQ, and the earlier era 750V InnoSwitch3-AQ, PI additionally has different automotive grade chips. Together with non-isolated flyback change IC LinkSwitch-TN2Q sequence, automotive-specific diode Qspeed and SCALE-iDriver sequence gate driver IC, to fulfill numerous energy provide and energy conversion purposes in electrical automobiles.

From high-voltage MOSFET to GaN to immediately’s SiC FET, as a PI that beforehand targeted on AC/DC, it's extending its attain to extra markets together with motor drives, new power inverters, electrical automobiles, and so on., on the one hand, growing its market. Alternatives, and the opposite is to make use of its data within the high-voltage discipline to assist the implementation of the dual-carbon coverage, thus fulfilling the corporate’s long-standing dedication to power conservation and emission discount.