Short circuit behavior of IGBTs correlated to the intrinsic device structure and on the application circuit

Problems associated with the short circuit tolerance of power control circuits can be solved successfully using IGBTs as power switches even when the intrinsic short circuit performance of these devices is modest. The protection circuit of an IGBT with modest short circuit capability is more critical then the protection circuit of a rugged IGBT. On the other hand, IGBTs with the best short circuit performance have the higher operating losses due to their higher saturation voltage. This note demonstrates how the IGBTs and the protection circuit were optimized to get the best trade-off between efficiency, ruggedness, and reliability of the application