Silicon carbide power processing unit for Hall effect thrusters

This paper presents the development of a high efficiency, rad-hard 3.8 kW silicon carbide (SiC) based power processing unit (PPU) power supply for the High Voltage Hall Accelerator (HiVHAC) Hall effect thruster. The power converter utilizes SiC JFET power switches which have on-resistance an order of magnitude smaller than equivalent 600V rad-hard silicon MOSFETs. A prototype PPU power converter was developed which was able to achieve up to 700 V output voltage, 1.3 kW output power, 2.55 kW/kg gravimetric power density, and up to 92% efficiency. The converter operates on 80-160 V input and can dynamically control the output voltage between 200-700 V.