In this study, design considerations of gate driver for silicon carbide (SiC) power devices is discussed. The work is focused in minimizing the common-mode current injection into the control circuit, thereby adapting the gate circuit to operate at higher dv/dt of fast switching transients. By reducing the common-mode interference with the control circuit, the signal integrity can be increased, spurious faults in the converter can be minimized and the reliability of the converter operation can be enhanced. The effect of the coupling capacitance of the isolation transformer in the gate driver design is taken into account. The shoot-through protection of the device is ensured based on device voltage measurement. The operation of the designed gate driver is validated through double pulse switching as well as continuous operation of various converters. All the corresponding test results are reported. © 2017 IEEE.

Kamalesh Hatua

Department of Electrical Engineering

Capacitance

Design

Electric equipment protection

Energy conversion

Power semiconductor devices

Silicon

Silicon carbide

Silicon compounds

Switching

COMMON MODE CURRENTS

FAST SWITCHING

GATE DRIVERS

SILICON CARBIDE MOSFETS

Switching loss

MOSFET devices

IIT Madras is a public technical and research university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Founded in 1959, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance.

IIT Madras has been ranked as the top engineering institute in India for four years in a row by the National Institutional Ranking Framework of the MHRD

It currently offers undergraduate, postgraduate and research degrees across 16 disciplines in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. About 596 faculty belonging to science and engineering departments and centres of the Institute are engaged in teaching, research and industrial consultancy.

IIT Madras

Gate driver design considerations for silicon carbide MOSFETs including series connected devices

2017 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, ECCE 2017

High di/dt and dv/dt of SiC MOSFET cause a considerable amount of overshoot in device voltage and current during switching transients in the presence of inverter layout parasitic inductance and load parasitic capacitance. The excessive overshoots in device voltage and current cause failure of the device. Moreover, these uncontrolled overshoots increase the switching loss in the inverter. It is difficult to reduce parasitic inductance beyond a certain point. This paper proposes an active gate driving technique, which allows inverter to operate with moderate amount of layout parasitic inductance and load parasitic capacitance. The proposed technique dramatically reduces switching loss of the SiC MOSFET with the help of existing parasitic elements. The proposed switching loss reduction technique is termed as quasi zero switching. The developed active gate driver has been tested in a double pulse test setup and a 10 kW two-level voltage source inverter driving an induction motor. © 2017 IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics

Parasitic Inductance and Capacitance-Assisted Active Gate Driving Technique to Minimize Switching Loss of SiC MOSFET

Silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET is capable of achieving better efficiency and better power density of power converters due to its low on-state resistance and lower switching losses compared to silicon (Si) Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor. Operation of power converters at higher switching frequency using SiC devices allows reduction in filter size and hence improves the power to weight ratio of the converter. This paper presents switching characterization of 1200-V 100-A SiC MOSFET module and compares the efficiency of a two-level voltage source converter (2L-VSC) using SiC MOSFETs and Si IGBTs. Also, various design considerations of the 1200-V 100-A SiC MOSFET-based 2L-VSC including gate drive design, bus bar packaging, and thermal management have been elaborated. The designed and developed 2L-VSC is operated to supply 35 kVA load at 20-kHz switching frequency with dc bus voltage of 800 V and the corresponding experimental results are presented. © 1972-2012 IEEE.

IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications

Design considerations and performance evaluation of 1200-V 100-A SiC MOSFET-based two-level voltage source converter

IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics

Intelligent Gate Drive for Fast Switching and Crosstalk Suppression of SiC Devices

IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics

Comparative Evaluation of 15-kV SiC MOSFET and 15-kV SiC IGBT for Medium-Voltage Converter Under the Same <italic>dv/dt</italic> Conditions

2016 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE)

Performance comparison of 10 kV#x2013;15 kV high voltage SiC modules and high voltage switch using series connected 1.7 kV LV SiC MOSFET devices

Journal	Data powered by Typeset2017 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, ECCE 2017
Publisher	Data powered by TypesetInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Open Access	No