Recently, many friends have talked to me about the differences between IGBT single tube and module, the comparison of advantages and disadvantages, etc. I have been engaged in the research and development of power electronic products for more than ten years, and have certain applications for single tubes and modules, and the products I have developed include power frequency tower UPS, 500KW photovoltaic inverter, modular UPS, charging module, etc., combined with practical work, I often communicate with power semiconductor manufacturers and many inverter hardware engineers in the industry, and make a simple summary of single tubes and modules, hoping to help you in IGBT design and inverter selection.
IGBT stands for Insulate-Gate Bipolar Transistor, and its production process mainly includes the growth, cutting, cleaning, preparation, packaging and testing of transistor materials. The following is a comparative analysis of single tube and module IGBT from the following aspects.
igbtSingle tubes and modulesThe process of making it
Both single tube and module undergo the growth, cutting, cleaning, and preparation process of transistor materials, and the difference between the two is mainly in packaging and testing, IGBT single tube is to package IGBT wafer chips in an independent package, common packaging types include TO-220, TO-247, etc. IGBT module is a modular device that packages multiple IGBT wafer chips, diode wafer chips, etc. together, and the internal IGBT wafer chips work in parallel, which is essentially multiple IGBT single tubes in parallel.
In the production of IGBT modules, IGBT manufacturers will connect wafers from the same batch in parallel to form modules. Generally, the single-tube IGBT shipped by IGBT manufacturers to inverter manufacturers is generally the same batch of wafers, and IGBT single-tube users will also clearly require parallel connection of the same batch with the same manufacturer in the process of use. Therefore, from the point of view of parallelism, there is essentially no difference between the two. Many friends have mentioned that module consistency is better than single-tube consistency, which is not correct.
igbtManufacturers' shipments of single tubes and modules
According to data from Infineon's official website, the sales of single tubes in 2021 will be about 1 2 of module sales, of which modules are mainly sold in high-power tower applications, with a power of more than 200kva. Below 200kVA, more and more users choose to use the single-tube solution. In terms of shipments, the shipments of IGBT single tubes are much larger than those of IGBT modules.
Single-tube has been used on a large scale in the photovoltaic industry since 2010, and now in the fields of UPS, charging module, photovoltaic, OBC, and electric drive, it is basically dominated by single-tube IGBT. Hewang Electric, a major wind power converter manufacturer in the industry, has recently launched an inverter that uses 6 IGBT single tubes for parallel connection, and the power of a single module reaches 300kvar.
Many inverter manufacturers in Shenzhen, such as Huawei, Vertiv, Kehua, INVT, Hewang, etc., generally use a single-tube IGBT solution for module power less than 200kW, and IGBT module solution is generally used for high-power tower machines.
Judging from the shipment data in recent years, the application of IGBT single tube will become more and more extensive.
Application status in different fields
In the power electronics industry, where technology competition is fierce, such as photovoltaic inverters, UPS, charging modules and other fields, many new products have begun to use IGBT single-tube solutions after 2014. In some subdivisions such as APF SVG, non-standard customized power supply, etc., they have gradually realized the advantages of single tubes, especially in terms of power density and supply, single tubes have natural advantages.
Why single-tube IGBT is favored by more and more users, I think there are mainly the following aspects, first of all, the supply problem, the biggest difficulty brought by the new crown epidemic to many manufacturers is the problem that IC cannot be bought, the same is true for IGBT modules, due to the limited suppliers and poor packaging compatibility, resulting in many inverter manufacturers IGBT modules can not be bought, resulting in inability to ship. In contrast, there are dozens or even hundreds of IGBT single-tube suppliers, the package is fully compatible, there is no supply problem, and there is no need to change the board to replace it, which brings great convenience to the replacement of inverter manufacturers.
Secondly, the capacity of single-tube IGBT is getting larger and larger, and the IGBT single-tube 247-PLUS package in the past two years has basically achieved more than 650V 100A, and the power can basically reach 300A by using the staggered 3*3 parallel scheme, so it is easy to achieve the single-tube scheme for inverters with a single module less than 300A power range.
The third point I think is that the single-tube IGBT is small in size, which is conducive to the product system scheme and structural design, the topology is flexible, and the IGBT with different characteristics is easy to match, which can help improve efficiency and power density. Taking Huawei's latest generation of modular UPS as an example, the height is 3U, the power has reached 125kW, and the overload can be 150% for 1 minute, all using single-tube IGBT or MOS solutions.
Reliability comparison
The reliability of the inverter does not depend on whether the IGBT adopts a single tube or a module solution, from parallel current sharing and protection.
At the beginning of the design of Tesla's electric vehicle, the electric drive adopts the SiC MOS multi-tube parallel solution, and its products are the most reliable products in the field of electric vehicles.
Therefore, it is not objective to simply use modules and single tubes to compare the reliability of inverters.
TotalKnot:
The author believes that the design and selection of the inverter whether to use a module or a single tube mainly depends on the power segment, and if the inverter is greater than 200K, if the technology accumulation is insufficient, it is recommended to use the module IGBT scheme. For power inverters less than 200K, it is recommended to use a single-tube IGBT solution, which has more advantages in terms of power density and product performance.