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SemiSouth Laboratories, Inc. and the Center for Advanced Vehicle Systems (CAVS) at Mississippi State University have demonstrated that SemiSouth's enhancement-mode silicon carbide (SiC) Junction Field Effect Transistor (JFET) reduced an off-the-shelf solar inverter energy loss by as much as 50 percent.

"All that was necessary to drop-in the enhancement-mode JFETs was the addition of a few passive components in the control circuit to take into consideration the change in threshold voltage between the original IGBTs and these JFETs. We started the inverter and it ran without any problems," noted Robin Kelley, an applications engineer for SemiSouth.

“This new enhancement-mode JFET can be used as a direct replacement for silicon MOSFETs and IGBTs in virtually any off-the-shelf converter or inverter design,” said Vess Johnson, SemiSouth’s President and CEO. "The fact that the JFETs can be used as a drop-in replacement means that the barrier to entry has been greatly reduced and that designers working with these devices will be able to see immediate performance and efficiency improvements and will be able to drive new and better products to market much faster.”