To facilitate and ease the assessment of system switching performance in silicon carbide (SiC) designs, Bourns has custom-designed inductors for the Wolfspeed SpeedVal Kit™, a SiC evaluation platform. The inductors designed in partnership with Arrow Electronics and Wolfspeed include two Bourns® buck/boost inductors and one air core inductor.
The two custom inductors feature different inductance ranges, and are intended for use as the inductive element in the LC power filter stage that is part of the Wolfspeed® platform’s add-on accessory board. This LC filter enables the half-bridge portion of the main SpeedVAL Kit™’s motherboard to be tested as either a buck or boost configuration mode. Bourns further optimized these buck/boost inductors for the platform’s frequency range and nominal peak operating current. Using Bourns’ advanced construction techniques, the inductors are designed to reduce overall AC coil and core loss while delivering a significantly enhanced magnetic flux path along with weight, component density and distributed gap advantages.
The Bourns® customized air core inductor provides inductance value combinations that allow designers to complete double pulse testing from its three sets of stacked windings that produce six different inductance values. Offering the inductive load necessary for fast turn on/turn off energy and reverse recovery characteristics for switching measurements, Bourns® air core inductor also features a heightened magnetic flux path, low core loss, an especially high operating frequency and very low parasitic and shunt capacitance.