Power electronic devices [9], also known as power semiconductor devices [5], refer to electronic devices that can directly handle electrical energy and perform energy transformation or control in the main circuit [6], mainly used in the power equipment’s electrical energy transformation and control circuits [7].
Power electronic devices can be broadly classified into two categories: vacuum electronic devices and semiconductor devices [6]. According to the degree to which they can be controlled by the control circuit signals, they can be divided into non-controlled devices, semi-controlled devices, and fully-controlled devices [6]. The vacuum tube that emerged in 1904 initiated the era of electronic technology [8]. In 1957, General Electric of the United States developed the world’s first industrial ordinary crystal rectifier tube, marking the birth of power electronic technology [7]. In the late 1970s, fully-controlled devices such as gate-turn-off thyristors and bipolar junction transistors rapidly developed, and the second generation of power electronic devices emerged [7]. In the 1980s, the appearance of bipolar composite devices [8]. In 1982, the United States was the first to develop an IGBT sample and mass-produced it in 1985 [8]. In the late 1990s, IGBT became the main device in modern power electronic technology [7]. In 2025, the International Electrotechnical Commission released two key international standards in the field of power semiconductor devices revised by China [4], namely “Semiconductor Devices – Part 2: Discrete Devices – Rectifier Diodes” and “Semiconductor Devices – Part 6: Discrete Devices – Thyristors”.
The two main electrodes of power electronic devices are connected to the main circuit [11], including power discrete devices and power integrated circuits, used to transform and control current, voltage, frequency, phase, and number of phases, to achieve various functions such as rectification, inversion, and chopper [10]. Characteristics include: the ability to handle electrical power can range from milliwatts to megawatts, generally much larger than that of electronic devices for processing information; the handled electrical power is large, to reduce its own loss, it usually operates in the switching state; in practical applications, it often requires control by information electronic circuits.