For each power electronic system a selection of a suitable power semiconductor must be made from a very large solution space. In order to be able to compare the transistors with each other, data sheet values are usually taken to hand, which is done by characterizing the semiconductors. The measurement procedures are currently described in the IEC 60747 series of standards "Semiconductor devices - Single semiconductor devices". The switching energy and thus the switching losses of the semiconductors are usually determined with the aid of the double pulse test. The structure of this test is described in the mentioned standard.
Due to the increasing use of SiC and GaN semiconductors, which achieve significantly faster switching speeds, the influence of the measurement methodology and the setup, which are not defined in the standards, is becoming ever greater. Since fundamentally different measurement setups and measurement systems are used, the traceability and thus the comparability of the measurement results is not trivially given.
In addition, manufacturers often provide models that can only be used by a limited number of simulation tools. This limits the comparison of different components for the customer, since models that cannot be used must be created by complex parameterization due to the lack of tools.