Tektronix Supports VisIC Technologies to Advance Electric Vehicle Powertrain Technology

Tektronix Supports VisIC Technologies to Advance Electric Vehicle Powertrain Technology

As countries around the world strive to reduce carbon emissions, the market capacity of electric vehicles (EVs) is expanding. The key factors driving this growth will be minimizing the switching losses in the EV powertrain and achieving significant efficiency improvements by using smaller, longer-lasting batteries. For this reason, VisIC Technologies is advocating the use of gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors and using Tektronix's powerful test equipment to ensure outstanding performance.

VisIC Technologies' high-power switching technology using gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductor materials is expected to play a major role in increasing the global penetration of electric vehicles in the next decade, as it significantly reduces the operating costs of electric vehicles and extends their driving range. In order to provide more reliable and efficient power conversion for today's automotive market, VisIC uses Tektronix oscilloscopes to provide accurate precision measurements to promote the advancement of electric vehicle powertrain technology (video).

VisIC Technologies, headquartered in Israel, has been designing its own Direct Drive D-Mode GaN (D3GaN) technology, which enables the development of smaller, lower-cost, and more efficient switching systems, achieving 400V, 200A switching in 8ns.

VisIC Technologies chose a Tektronix oscilloscope because it had to test the switching efficiency of GaN transistors under high voltage (400V) and high frequency oscillation conditions. It was critical for the company to ensure that the measurement data obtained was "real" and not affected or limited by the measurement system it used. In addition, the equipment used must be able to ensure measurement accuracy without introducing too much noise into the measurement process.

Electrical isolation

VisIC Technologies was impressed by Tektronix's TIVP IsoVu™ measurement system because it provides an electrically isolated (optically isolated) system that can resolve high-bandwidth, high-voltage differential signals in the presence of large common-mode voltages. IsoVu provides excellent common-mode rejection over a wide bandwidth, uses isolation technology to improve the accuracy of differential measurements, and can quickly convert reference voltages while keeping dangerous voltages away from the oscilloscope.

TIVP is designed for use with Tektronix Series 4/5/6 MSO oscilloscopes running software version 1.28 or higher. VisIC Technologies used the following Tektronix products: MSO54, MSO44 and MSO58 oscilloscopes, various probes and TEK-DPG deskew pulse generators. VisIC also selected Keithley 2410, 2400 and 2450 source measure units (SMUs) and DAQ6510 data acquisition and logging multimeters to complete the test solution.

At the forefront of technology

Roman Volkov, Director of Testing and Characterization at VisIC Technologies, is excited about developing unique advanced solutions and processes, which means the company is always at the forefront of technology.

“We evaluated a variety of equipment for performing characterization measurements and chose Tektronix and Keithley systems for our power lab and R&D because they can most accurately test the signals we work with in dynamic measurement applications,” he said. “I particularly like the Tektronix oscilloscopes and Keithley SMUs because they are so easy and fast to operate. They give us the flexibility we need to perform all the relevant measurements and get accurate and stable results every time.”

Roman continued, “As we lead this very important market, we must have as many measurement options as possible and be able to make accurate measurements with very high resolution. When dealing with GaN technology, measurements are not simple. For example, we need optically isolated probes with a minimum bandwidth of 800MHz to 1GHz, and we found that the best equipment on the market for these applications comes from Tektronix. They provide us with the solutions we need now and in the future.”