Infineon Innovates Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors

Infineon Technologies Inc. highlighted 650V TRENCHSTOP 5 at the PCIM Asia 2013 power electronics, smart sports, and renewable energy management exhibition. A new generation of thin-wafer IGBT insulated gate bipolar transistors - TRENCHSTOP 5 has gained tremendous market attention since its introduction in the fall of 2012 and is considered an innovative technology. With more than 400 customers receiving samples today, Infineon began mass production in May 2013 and many customers will also start trial production.

TRENCHSTOP 5 achieves a major leap in the performance of IGBT products. Compared with the mainstream IGBT technology in the current market, its system efficiency has greatly improved. Compared with competitors' IGBTs, their system efficiency has increased by nearly 1%. In addition to improved efficiency, higher breakdown voltages increase reliability, allow customers to gain competitive advantage and achieve product differentiation, so it is highly favored by customers.

High efficiency and power density are the key reasons why TRENCHSTOP 5 becomes the preferred device for Boost circuits with a switching frequency range of 16 kHz to 30 kHz for photovoltaic inverters, and for UPS PFC circuits and battery charging circuits with a switching frequency range of 20 kHz to 70 kHz. The increased efficiency allows for a lower operating junction temperature, ensuring longer life and higher reliability, enabling higher power density designs. The latter allows customers to reconsider the design using a smaller package, such as TO-220 instead of TO-247.

In addition, the designer used TRENCHSTOP 5 for the first time in the design of a system that is extremely noise-sensitive, such as an audio amplifier. Thanks to the extremely durable and soft switching characteristics of TRENCHSTOP 5, designers have access to extremely stable amplifier-level bus voltages for wide input voltages to meet optimum audio quality and low system weight requirements.

TRENCHSTOP 5 has outstanding efficiency. Compared with Infineon's HighSpeed (H3) series, the turn-off loss is reduced by 60%, and the saturation pressure drop closely related to the turn-on loss also has a positive temperature coefficient. Compared to H3, its gate charge is 2.5 times smaller and easier to drive, so smaller drivers can be used to reduce costs. In addition, the fast diodes used in TRENCHSTOP 5 have low forward voltage drop due to temperature, and their reverse recovery time is less than 50ns. The low output capacitance provides excellent light-load efficiency and is ideally suited for applications that require less than 40% of maximum rated power.