Driving and Characterization of wide bandgap semiconductors for voltage source converter applications

Author

Zheyu Zhang ; Wang, Fred

Author_Institution

Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

fYear

2014

fDate

13-15 Oct. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

84

Abstract

No power conversion without power semiconductors Power semiconductors is NOTHING without a gate driver! The gate driver will properly drive a power semiconductor and bring the maximum performance. For WBG devices, Driving capability of gate driver IC (rise/fall time, pull-up/pull-down resistance) & CM transient immunity of gate driver isolation are special requirements. The gate driver will protect a power semiconductor and entire converter if something goes wrong. For WBG devices, Cross-talk is easily induced, leading to potential hazard of shoot-through failure and gate terminal reliability issues. A gate assist circuit was introduced for cross-talk suppression. Short circuit capability is limited. The desaturation protection circuit with <; 200 ns response time was described for device reliability enhancement.

Keywords

power convertors; power semiconductor devices; CM transient immunity; WBG devices; cross-talk suppression; desaturation protection circuit; device reliability enhancement; gate driver; gate driver IC; gate driver isolation; power semiconductors; pull-up/pull-down resistance; shoot-through failure; short circuit capability; voltage source converter; wide bandgap semiconductors; Educational institutions; Integrated circuits; Isolators; Leakage currents; Logic gates; Photonic band gap; Switches;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications (WiPDA), 2014 IEEE Workshop on

Conference_Location

Knoxville, TN

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WiPDA.2014.6964609

Filename

6964609