Design of an Advanced Programmable Current-Source Gate Driver for Dynamic Control of SiC Device

Wang, Xiang, Wu, Haimeng and Pickert, Volker (2019) Design of an Advanced Programmable Current-Source Gate Driver for Dynamic Control of SiC Device. In: 2019 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), 17-21 March 2019, Anaheim, California, USA.

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Official URL: https:/doi.org/10.1109/APEC.2019.8721941

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) power devices outperform Silicon-based devices in operational voltage levels, power densities, operational temperatures and switching frequencies. However, the gate oxide of SiC-based device is more fragile compared with its Si counterpart. The vulnerability of the gate oxide in SiC power devices requires the development of a gate driver that is able to have more control during the turn-on and turn-off process. This paper proposes an innovative current-source gate driver where the gate current can be fully programmed. The novelty of the gate driver is that the dynamic switching transients and the static on/off-state can be controlled independently. In order to achieve this approach, a signal decomposition and reconstruction technique is proposed to apply the separate control over the dynamic switching transient and the static on/off-state gate voltage respectively. The fundamental principle of the proposed circuit is verified in simulation. In addition, a prototype of the active gate driver has been built and tested to validate the effectiveness of the flexible control over the gate voltage.

Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Active gate driver, Current-source, Dynamic control, SiC Device
Subjects: F300 Physics
G100 Mathematics
H600 Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Department: Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering
Depositing User: Rachel Branson
Date Deposited: 31 Mar 2020 11:34
Last Modified: 31 Jul 2021 18:47
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/42624

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