Reevaluating DC-Link Capacitors for SiC Inverters

In a technical feature for Electronic Design, Hannah Ansell, our Head of Electronics, examines one of the most consequential but underappreciated challenges facing power electronics engineers today: selecting the right DC-link capacitor for silicon carbide EV inverters.

The shift from IGBTs to SiC MOSFETs has brought significant performance gains, but those same characteristics create new stresses on the capacitor sitting between the battery pack and the switching stage. SiC devices generate higher-frequency ripple currents and steeper voltage transitions than their IGBT predecessors, and a component that was once treated as a solved problem needs to be reconsidered from first principles.

Hannah walks through the capacitor technologies relevant to modern traction inverters, the trade-offs between them, and how the right system-level approach brings it all together.

Read the full article at electronicdesign.com, July 2026