Analysis of switching properties of different high voltage IGBTs operating under hard-switching conditions

This paper studies the switching properties of different IGBTs with blocking voltage of 6.5 kV operating under hard-switching conditions. The reference topology used in analysis is a half-bridge inverter with power rating of 300 kVA. Since the development of high-voltage IGBT based converters is often a tradeoff between compactness, complexity, efficiency and cost the different state of the art 6.5 kV IGBTs with collector currents of 200 A, 400 A, 600 A and 750 A were compared under the desired operation conditions. The most technically and economical feasible solution is proposed. Some generalizations and practical considerations are provided.