Ballard Power Systems Corporation

Continental Automotive Systems Us, Inc.

Siemens Vdo Automotive Corporation

Fred Flett

Sayeed Ahmed

Douglas K Maly

Ajay V Patwardhan

Scott Parkhill

Kanghua Chen

Pablo Rodriguez

Gerardo Jimenez

Lizhi Zhu

Richard Joseph Hampo

Bryan M Ludwig

Fengtai Huang

John M Van Dyke

Subramanian Vadula

A circuit and method to provide dynamic fault protection to transistors are disclosed. The fault protection may be particularly suited for protecting insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs).

Operating and controlling insulated gate bipolar transistors in high speed failure mode situations

An insulated gate bipolar transistor includes bump pad connectors to provide thermal contact with a heat spreader for dissipating heat away form the insulated gate bipolar transistor.

Insulated gate bipolar transistor

Power converter system topologies comprise a DC/DC converter. The DC/DC converter includes a transformer coupling a high side to a low side. The high side may include an inverter bridge in the form of an inverter module and an inductor. The low side may include a rectifier in the form of a rectifier module and a pair of inductors. The transformer may take the form of a planar transformer.

DC/DC converter

A DC bus for use in a power module has a positive DC conductor bus plate parallel with a negative DC conductor bus plate. One or more positive leads are connected to the positive bus and are connectable to a positive terminal of a power source. One or more negative leads are connected to the negative bus and are connectable to a negative terminal of a power source. The DC bus has one or more positive connections fastenable from the positive bus to the high side of a power module. The DC bus also has one or more negative connections fastenable from the negative bus to the low side of the power module. The positive bus and negative bus permit counter-flow of currents, thereby canceling magnetic fields and their associated inductances, and the positive and negative bus are connectable to the center portion of a power module.

Method to reduce module inductance

A tri-level inverter power module has an architecture employing a high degree of modularity that allows a base power module to be quickly, easily, and cost effectively configured to address a large variety of applications.

Tri-level inverter

A power converter utilizes a high frequency capacitor and a bulk capacitor coupled across the DC terminals to reduce high frequency effect and voltage overshoot, leading to space and cost savings in power converter design. Each capacitor may be physically coupled adjacent the gate driver board via clips, clamps, and/or fasteners.

Power converter architecture employing at least one capacitor across a DC bus

Power converters such as power modules configured as inverters employ modularized approaches. In some aspects, semiconductor devices are thermally coupled directly to thermally conductive substrates without intervening dielectric or insulative structures. Additionally, or alternatively, semiconductor devices are thermally coupled to thermally conductive substrates with relatively large surface areas before heat transferred from the semiconductor devices encounters a dielectric or electrically insulating structure with correspondingly high thermal impedance.

Architecture for power modules such as power inverters

Leadframe-based module DC bus design to reduce module inductance

A power converter comprising a DC/AC bridge circuit electrically coupled between positive and negative DC bus terminals and a set of phase terminals, a DC/DC bridge circuit electrically coupled to the positive and negative DC bus terminals and a set of DC bridge terminals. The power converter may be configured to control the transfer of power to and/or from the DC bridge terminals and to control the transfer of power to and/or from the AC phase terminals.

Power converter

A dual power module architecture employing a high degree of modularity, that allows a base power module to be quickly, easily, and cost effectively configured to address a large variety of applications.

Growing community of inventors

Bloomfield, MI, United States of America

Fred Flett