Accel-RF Announces New High Voltage Switching Test System

Accel-RF Instruments announced the release of its new High Voltage Switching Test System at the CS International show in Brussels, Belgium earlier this month. The world’s first fully integrated power-switching system addresses an industry wide critical need for reliability and burn-in testing of increasingly popular GaN and SiC devices.

Accel-RF’s High Voltage Switching Test System is capable of measuring performance degradation at base-plate temperatures up to 200degC under a variety of conditions including switching-power applications up to 1kV (off) and 25A (on) for up to 1-MHz switching frequencies.

The hardware and software supports both soft- and hard-switching applications. The Accel-RF test platform leverages the integration of its high temperature operating life (HTOL) burn-in platform with new fast-switching measurement techniques. This capability builds on the industry-leading AARTS test platform and solidifies Accel-RF’s product offering as the most comprehensive HTOL test platform in the marketplace.

“With the emergence of compound semiconductors, such as GaN and SiC, for use in power-switching systems, establishing reliability performance metrics to use-applications is critical to the time-to-market phase of the technology,“explained David Sanderlin, CTO and executive VP of Accel-RF.

“Our platform affords characterisation not only in basic reliability statistics in a controlled “soft-switch” setting, but also supports the requirement to induce the higher-stress “hard-switch” environment of a real application. Moreover, we achieve this capability without requiring huge external load resistors and associated heat dissipation and physical size”, he added.

The High Voltage Switching Test System is available in 2 – 24 channel configurations, and can be customised to support multiple device package types including TO-220, TO-247, and SMD.