Korea’s high speed rail expansion powered by IXYS high power Westcode team

BIEL, SWITZERLAND & CHIPPENHAM, ENGLAND: IXYS Corp. announced that its wholly owned UK subsidiary, Westcode Semiconductors Ltd, has successfully co-operated with Hyundai Heavy Industry in Korea to outfit Korail’s (Korea’s national train operator) latest generation of High Speed Train with its 2400A 4500V press pack Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) and High Power SONICTM fast recovery diode technology.

Korea’s commitment to a world class high speed train network is unveiled in its latest development, the Hyundai-Rotem KTX II or KTX-Sancheon project, an entirely Korean manufactured high speed train which has a maximum speed of 330 km/h and a 0–300 Km/h acceleration time of 316 seconds, an improvement of 49 seconds over the previous KTX I train.

Westcode’s IGBT which forms the basic building block for the high speed power converter enables such speeds with industry leading reliability. The next generation press-pack IGBT uses latest IGBT technology featuring an improved Safe Operating Area (SOA) and reduction in on-state losses of approximately 25 percent from the previous generation.

The mature press pack IGBT technology uses a fully hermetic compression contact ceramic capsule in order to assure market-leading reliability in the megawatt range in high power applications where efficiency and reliability are foremost.

Korail plans to introduce 13 KTX-Sancheon train sets by the end of this year and five more during early 2011.

Korea’s high speed rail network will be showcased later this year when Seoul hosts November’s G20 summit where many of the dignitaries will enjoy the 20 minutes reduction in travel time between Seoul and Busan.

“We are extremely pleased to have the opportunity of working closely with Hyundai Heavy Industry in the development of the technology to facilitate the high profile success of the KTX-Sancheon high speed train,” commented Bradley Green, Vice President of International Sales for IXYS.

“We are also proud that the new train generation powered by Westcode technology is estimated to transport over 38 million passengers in 2010 at an estimated accumulated distance of 22 million kilometres. This represents a true example of the reliability of the Westcode products.”

“Our focus on the higher end of power semiconductors with our UK team, based on our experience with high power thyristors in hermetic packages, led us to develop the IGBT capsule using our own proprietary technology. It has been a great team effort within our European group to combine MOS and Bipolar technologies for high power trains,” said Dr. Nathan Zommer, CEO of IXYS.

“Again, we see the importance of our power semiconductors in enabling fast mass transit systems with high efficiency and reduced carbon emissions. It is a great tribute to Hyundai-Rotem and Korea in leading Asia into the 21st century with an advanced mass transit system, and we are proud to be part of it.”