New Industry Products

Reverse-Conducting IGBT Optimized for Induction Cooking Applications

February 23, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

Infineon Technologies AG has extended its portfolio of reverse-conducting (RC) soft-switching IGBTs with a 1350V device with a monolithic integrated reverse conduction diode in 20A current class. The new 20A RC-H5 devices extend Infineon's performance leadership of the RC-H family, focusing on system efficiency and demanding reliability requirements for induction cooking applications. The new RC-H5 provides up to 30% reduction in switching losses compared to previous generations, allowing designers to use higher frequencies of up to 30kHz. Thus, the efficiency of the system with an RC-H5 device is improved by 0.5% leading to an overall performance of the system of more than 92%.

Lowered overall system costs can also be realized by using smaller inductor choices with less copper. The RC-H5 discrete IGBT is based on the ground breaking technology of the RC-H3 which remains available for existing designs. With the RC-H5, reliability has once again been improved by reducing power dissipation and a better thermal performance, even under higher ambient temperatures of up to 175 degrees C.

Additionally the turn-on spike current has been cut by 10% which leads to less stress on passive components in the system increasing reliability. Improved EMI behavior is an additional benefit. As a consequence there are less filtering requirements and lower system costs for the designers.

“With this next generation of RC-H5 discretes Infineon confirms its IGBT technology leadership addressing the rigorous requirements of Induction Cooking applications,” says Roland Stele, Marketing Director IGBT Power Discretes at Infineon Technologies AG. “Once again we have pushed forward the boundaries of system efficiency and reliability by offering application-specific power switches to our customers. This is made possible by our deep technological knowledge and system understanding of home appliance applications.”