© 2021 IEEE

The 8th IEEE Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications (WiPDA)

Highly Integrated 200 kW SiC Three-Phase Dual-Active-Bridge Converter with 3D-Printed Fluid
Coolers

David Bündgen
André Thönnessen
Niklas Fritz
Tobias Kamp
Rik W. De Doncker

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 Highly Integrated 200 kW SiC Three-Phase
Dual-Active-Bridge Converter with 3D-Printed
Fluid Coolers
David Bündgen, André Thönnessen, Niklas Fritz, Tobias Kamp, Rik W. De Doncker
Institute for Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (ISEA) - RWTH Aachen University
Jägerstraße 17/19 - 52066 Aachen - Germany
post@isea.rwth-aachen.de

Abstract—This work features a highly efficient high power TABLE I

density dc-dc converter based on a soft switching capable, D ESIGN PARAMETERS
dual-active-bridge topology. Moreover, to reduce switching losses
at high frequencies and consequently minimize the size of the Parameter Value
Nominal output power Pout 200 kW
passive components, modern 1200 V silicon carbide half bridge
Input voltage range Uin 600 V − 800 V
modules are used. Furthermore, to decrease the size of the cooling Output voltage range Uout 600 V − 750 V
apparatus, compact 3D-printed fluid coolers are utilized. These Switching frequency fsw 50 kHz
measures that has been stated previously resulted in a highly Total stray inductance Lσ 4 µH
integrated active part of the converter with a total box volume Transformer winding ratio NS/NP 1
of 8 dm3 including the semiconductor switches, capacitors and Total input capacitance Cin 120 µF
sensors for a 200 kW unit. The first prototype shows a power Total output capacitance Cout 120 µF
density capability of 6.48 kW/dm3 at a maximum power output Gate drive voltage UGS −5 V/15 V
of 201 kW. The design of this converter and its advanced cooling External gate resistor RG 1.8 Ω
concept as well as in-operation measurements will be presented.

Index Terms—dc-dc converter, 3D-printing, highly integrated,
dual-active-bridge, on-board charger, wide-band-gap semicon-
ductors
I. I NTRODUCTION
Due to the rising demand for electric drivetrains in the
road transportation sector, high power and high power density
converters are eventually in the scope of research in power
electronics [1, 2]. Furthermore, the emerging development of
fully electric catenary trucks with onboard chargers moves the
focus of the research toward high power galvanically isolated
dc-dc converters. In recent years, literature shows various
approaches to reduce the overall volume of galvanically non-
isolated dc-dc converters, such as use of wide-bandgap semi-
conductor devices and 3D-printing manufacturing techniques
for the cooling apparatus [2]. In this work, these approaches
are applied to galvanically isolated dc-dc converters in a
600 V, 200 kW range for catenary truck applications.
II. C ONCEPT
Achieving a high efficiency and therefore low electrical
losses is the key to reduce the overall size of the dc-dc
converter. Due to lower electrical losses, the cooling appa-
ratus can be minimized and therefore the overall volumetric
power density can be maximized. Additionally, the switching
frequency has to be considered as a second key parameter.
The switching frequency must be chosen very carefully, it
determines the overall size of the passive components, e.g.
capacitors, transformers and inductors on the one hand, and
the overall efficiency on the other hand [3]. Therefore, a high
switching frequency reduce the size of passive components,
but also increases the losses in the magnetics as well as the
switching losses for a given design. A good balance between
both these parameters has to be achieved to maximize the
power density [4].
The presented dc-dc converter is based on a three-phase
dual-active-bridge (DAB) topology. This DAB topology is well
known for a highly efficient zero-voltage switching operation
in a wide range of operating conditions [5, 6]. Moreover,
modern 1200 V half-bridge modules based on silicon-carbide
(SiC) MOSFETs are utilized to allow a higher switching
frequency and hence reduce the size of the passive components
while having comparably low switching losses [7]. In order to
cool these SiC-modules, novel 3D-printed fluid coolers with a
low thermic resistance are utilized.
An overview of the design parameters is shown in the table I. A
photo of the converter can be seen in Fig. 1. The DAB-stack
and the dc-link capacitor are visible on the left side of the
picture. The transformers mounted on the aluminum cooler-
plate are depicted on the right side of Fig. 1. In total, the
converter has a volume of 31 dm3 , with a length of 54 cm,
a width of 31 cm and a height of 18.5 cm.
 Six single-phase transformers
DAB-stack
DC-link
capacitor
Tubing for 3d-printed coolers
Cooling plate and tubing for transformers
Fig. 1. Converter setup
III. T OPOLOGY
The converter consists of two three-phase DAB converters
connected in parallel. A schematic of the converter is depicted
in Fig. 2. Each DAB consists of six half-bridge modules, three
for the three-phase bridge of the primary side and three for
the three-phase bridge of the secondary side. The three-phase
bridges are labeled as ’Bridge’ in Fig. 2. The letter ’P’ stands
for primary side and ’S’ for secondary side. Furthermore, the
two DABs will be distinguished from now on between ’DABA ’
and ’DABB ’. Additionally, for each DAB, three single-phase
transformers are connected in a star-point arrangement to form
a three-phase transformer network. For higher flexibility and
modularity, all bridges are identical and use the same half-
bridge modules, transformers, coolers, and dc-link capacitors.
Bridge A-P Bridge A-S
Uin Bridge B-P Bridge B-S
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit diagram of presented converter
IV. C ONVERTER D ESIGN
A. Modules and Cooling
The module that is being used is a FF6MR12W2M1 B11
by Infineon. This 1200 V SiC module is characterized by
low switching losses and a small overall package design in
comparison to other available modules. The thermal charac-
teristics of this module are not best in class considering its
baseplate-less design and the fact that the ceramic of the
direct copper bond is based on aluminum oxide. However,
the module has a good planar power-loop design, which
results in a good switching performance as well as low
switching losses. To ensure a sufficient cooling of the modules,
dual-sided 3D-printed stainless steel coolers are utilized. The
cooler/module assembly is depicted in Fig. 3. This assembly
maximizes the cooler effectiveness in terms of utilization of
the cooler surface area. Each cooler has a volume of 8 cm3 . For
the full converter, the cooling structure of the SiC modules has
a total volume of 48 cm3 which is insignificant in comparison
to the total volume of the active part of the converter which
has a box volume of 8 dm3 . A phase-change thermal interface
material (TIM) Bergquist Hi-Flow 300p is used to thermally
connect the modules to the cooler. Measurements of these
coolers have shown an excellent cooling performance, due to
there very low wall thickness of 150 µm [8]. The worst case
junction-to-coolant thermal resistance determined in the design
K
stage of the converter was: Rth = 0.513 W . A major drawback
of these coolers is a high pressure drop between the inlet and
the outlet of the coolers that is needed to ensure the optimal
cooling performance. In this work, the cooler is operated with
3
water as cooling fluid at a flowrate of 2 dm min and a pressure
drop of 1.5 bar.
B. Structure
As previously described, the converter consists of two DAB
converters. Each DAB consists of two three-phase bridges
and three transformers. An exploded CAD-view of two three-
phase bridges is depicted in Fig. 4. The 3D-printed coolers
are located horizontally in the center of the assembly. Two
modules are placed on the top and on the bottom of each
cooler. A power PCB is placed on top of each module,
Module contacts
Top module
Uout Dual-sided cooler
Bottom module
Fluid inlet/outlet
Fig. 3. Dual-sided fluid cooler with two SiC modules
 Driver PCB Transformer
DC-link
connection
capacitor DC-link
capacitor
Low-side gate

Power PCBs CeraLink capacitor

SiC modules DC-plus connection

High-side gate

DC-minus connection Voltage-measurement

3D-printed coolers
point

SiC modules
M6-connection to foil dc-link
Power PCBs
Fig. 5. Power PCB
Driver PCB

DC-link voltage of 900 V and a capacitance of 10 µF, resulting in a total

capacitor dc-link capacitance of 120 µF.

Fig. 4. CAD model of two three-phase bridges

which essentially conducts the current of the dc-link and the
transformer terminals to the module. Behind each stack of
the three horizontally aligned modules, a foil capacitor stack
is connected to the corresponding power PCBs. On top and
bottom of the module/power-PCB stack, a pluggable gate-
driver PCB is directly attached to the power boards.
C. Power PCB
A CAD model of the power PCB is shown in Fig. 5. To
ensure a low power-loop inductance, two FA 3 CeraLink
900 V 750 nF capacitors by TDK are soldered to the power
PCB. These capacitors are placed as close as possible to
the dc-terminals of the module to minimize the power-loop
inductance. Moreover, the additional connectors are attached
to the power PCBs to connect them to the gate driver PCB.
The yellow areas on the PCB are exposed gold-plated copper
to enable soldering. To ensure that the PCB can withstand
electrical currents of up to 162 A, 1 mm thick copper plates
are soldered to the exposed areas of the power PCB. The power
PCB is soldered to the pins of the module and connected to
the terminals of the dc-link capacitor and to the transformer
windings. The dc- voltage-measurement point is located in the
lower right corner of the power PCB. The dc+ point can be
found on another power PCB with a mirrored design, which is
placed directly parallel to the power board with the dc- pole.
E. Gate-Driver PCB
The voltage measurement circuit and the gate-drivers are on
the gate-driver PCB. A figure of the gate-driver PCB is shown
in Fig. 6. The gate-driver chips are signal-isolating UCC5390-
Q1 chips by Texas Instruments. Initially, four separate gate
drivers were used for one module. Two gate drivers were
attached to the high-side and two to the low-side. Later on,
this configuration was changed to only one gate-driver per gate
to avoid dangerous circulating currents in the gate path [9].
Each gate is connected to the gate driver output, through an
external resistor RG = 1.8 Ω. One MGJ1D151505MPC dc-dc
converter is used to generate the necessary supply voltage
for each pair of gate drivers. The converter creates a bipolar
voltage of UGS = −5 V/15 V.
Moreover, to ensure a good signal integrity, an additional layer
of signal isolators is attached to the board. The gate-driver
PCB is connected to a central interconnecting PCB, which is
located at the side of the fully assembled converter.
Low-side
dc-dc converter
Low-side
gate-driver

D. DC-Link Foil Capacitor

Since the previously mentioned CeraLink capacitors are not
High-side High-side
large enough to ensure a suitable low voltage ripple for the gate-driver dc-dc converter Signal isolator
application, a dc-link foil-capacitor stack is attached to each Voltage measurement circuit
three-phase bridge. Each dc-link capacitor stack consist of
twelve MKP1848S5 low-profile foil capacitors with a nominal Fig. 6. Gate-driver PCB

Xilinix Artix-7 Texas Instruments
XC7A35T TMS320C28
Fig. 7. Control PCB
Current sensor
Bridge A-P
Bridge A-S
Bridge B-P
Bridge B-S
Control PCB
Interconnecting PCB
Fig. 8. CAD model of the converter without magnetics
F. Control PCB
On top of the interconnecting board, the control PCB is con-
nected. The key components of the control unit are one Xilinix
Artix-7 XC7A35T FPGA and a TMS320C28 microcontroller
by Texas Instruments which are connected via a high-speed
external-memory interface. A photo of the described control
platform is visible in Fig. 7.
G. DAB-stack and Interconnection
A CAD model of the DAB-stack without the magnetics is
shown in Fig. 8. In contrast to Fig. 4, all four active bridges are
visible. On the side of the converter, the interconnecting PCB
is displayed. This interconnecting PCB includes line drivers
and the low-voltage dc-dc converter for the control logic as
well as connectors for the control PCB. Furthermore, all other
connections to the current sensors and the CAN interface are
integrated on this board. This DAB-stack has a total volume
of 8 dm3 .
V. T RANSFORMERS
The single-phase transformers are constructed of a
high-frequency litz wire which is wound around a ferrite core.
The transformer windings are designed to achieve a stray
inductance of Lσ = 4 µH. This stray inductance ensures a
power output of Pout = 200 kW at all possible input-to-output
TABLE II
T RANSFORMER PARAMETERS
Inductance Transformer 1 Transformer 2 Transformer 3
Lσ,DAB A 4.05 µH 4.05 µH 4.04 µH
Lσ,DAB B 3.84 µH 3.7 µH 3.9 µH
Lm,DAB A 262 µH 262 µH 221 µH
Lm,DAB B 262 µH 255 µH 263 µH
voltage ratios at a switching frequency of fsw = 50 kHz.
The turns ratio of the primary and secondary windings of the
transformer is NS/NP = 1. To ensure high thermal conductivity,
the transformers are encased in epoxy resin and enclosed in a
stainless steel housing. Finally, the transformers are mounted
onto an aluminum cooling-plate. The whole transformer con-
figuration is shown in Fig. 1. The first three transformers
of DABA are located on the top side of the cooler plate.
The transformers of DABB are placed on the bottom side
heat-sink plate. The stray and magnetizing inductances were
measured before the assembly of the converter and are listed
in table II. The maximum stray inductance deviation in DABA
is ∆Lσ,DAB,A = 10 nH. In DABB , the deviation is larger with
∆Lσ,DAB,b = 200 nH. The overall volume of the presented
transformer assembly is 11 dm3 .
VI. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
In order to test the converter, a back-to-back test-setup is
used. Since the converter consists of two bidirectional convert-
ers, it is possible to achieve a back-to-back operation within
the converter. For the experiments, a instantaneous flux and
current pattern is used [10, 11]. These methods help to avoid
dc-link current overshoots and unwanted dc-magnetization of
the transformer, while setting a new operating point. The
dead time is fixed to Tdead = 500 ns for all measurements.
The control platform is used to set an open-loop current set-
point. Therefore, the data from the voltage sensor located on
the gate-driver PCBs are used to calculate the required phase
shift for a set of dc-link voltages to reach the desired current.
The current sensor is not connected in this setup. In order
to achieve a back-to-back operation, the reference current of
∗
DABA is set to IDC,DAB,A ∗
= −IDC,DAB,B .
In Fig. 9, a functional diagram of the proposed setup is shown.
A unsymmetrical power flow between the two DABs will be
taken into account and managed by two 30 kW bidirectional
laboratory power supplies, which are directly connected to the
input and output connections of the converter. Both power
supplies could also work in back-to-back mode by diverting
the electrical power over the three-phase 400 V mains grid
with a power limit of 30 kW.
The converter in-operation waveforms at an output
power of Pout = 201 kW and at a dc-link voltage of
Uin = Uout = 620 V are shown in Fig. 10. In the first plot,
the low-side drain-source voltages of the primary side’s half
bridge 3 of DABA are depicted. The achieved voltage slope for
the switch-off event is dudtDS = 27.2 kV/µs at a gate resistance of
RG = 1.8 Ω. The voltage peak of the turn-off event is for this
 Converter 100
PDAB,A 97,5

Efficiency in %
95
92,5
Power supply Power supply
90
L1 L1 Uin = Uout = 600 V
L2 L2 87,5
L3 Uin = Uout = 620 V
L3 85
0 50 100 150 200
Pdiff Pdiff Output power in kW

PDAB,B Fig. 11. Efficiency

Fig. 9. Back-to-back setup

VII. C ONCLUSION AND O UTLOOK
In this work, a highly compact 200 kW DAB-based
Voltage in V

600 kW
dc-dc converter with a volumetric power density of 6.48 dm 3
400 has been presented. Firstly, the overall concept based on
200 uDS,LS,A−P,3 SiC-modules cooled by 3D-printed fluid coolers was intro-
0 uDS,LS,A−S,3 duced. After that, the used dual DAB-topology was pre-
250 sented. Followed by an in-detail presentation of all relevant
Current in A

components of the converter design. It was shown, that a

100
0 iphase,B−P,1
−100
−250
0 5 10 15 20
Time in µs
Fig. 10. Measurment 100 kW
operating point ûDS = 745 V. In the lower graph of Fig. 10,
the phase currents of DABB are shown. In DABB , saturation
effects occur in phase 1. The current in this waveform should
be iphase,B−P,1 (t = 3 µs) = 200 A. Nevertheless, due to the
signal distorition of the gate-drivers the voltage-time areas
across the main inductance Lm are not zero. Therefore, the
transformer of phase 1 shows a saturation peak in the phase
current of iphase,B−P,1 (t = 3 µs) = 232 A. This effect is also
present in the phase current of transformer 3 of DABB . The
second transformer is not affected by saturation.
An efficiency plot can be seen in Fig. 11. At the point with
the lowest measured output power Pout = 7.7 kW the lowest
efficiency of η = 89 % is measured. In this operation area
the phase currents of the half-bridges are not large enough
to achieve zero voltage switching. With increasing output
power the boundary conditions for zero voltage switching are
fulfilled and therefore the efficiency rises. At an output power
of Pout = 90.5 kW the converter reaches its peak efficiency
of η = 98.6 % for Uin = Uout = 600 V. From that point
on, the efficiency decreases with increasing output power. At
the nominal output power, an efficiency of η = 97.7 % is
achieved with Pout = 201 kW and a slightly higher input and
output voltage of Uin = Uout = 620 V. Finally, with a total
converter volume of 31 dm3 and a maximum output power of
kW
Pout = 201 kW a volumetric power density of 6.48 dm 3 is
200 kW active front-end could be implemented in a vol-
ume of 8 dm3 . Moreover, the experimental setup and the
iphase,B−P,2
iphase,B−P,3 measurement-results have been shown. Waveforms of an oper-
ating point at Uin = Uout = 620 V and Pout = 201 kW have
25 30
been discussed and analyzed. Finally, the efficiency of the
converter for various operating points has been presented.
In future work, the efficiency analysis of the converter will
be investigated in detail for combinations of different input-
to-output voltage ratios at various power outputs. In addition,
a comparison between the currently implemented modulation
technique and more sophisticated modulation schemes will be
performed. Furthermore, a volume reduction through better
cable and tubing management between the transformer and
the DAB-stack will be realized.
VIII. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The work presented in this paper has been carried out
within the public project ConverT (16EM4009-2) funded by
the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature
Conservation and Nuclear Safety.
Moreover, this project has been accomplished in close coop-
eration with IQ evolution GmbH.
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