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Abstract
A central issue in reducing the size and cost of IGBT power converters is to control or limit dv/dt and di/dt during the switching process. Load side snubbers and clamp circuits are bulky and expensive. Increasing the gate resistors values is cheap and simple but switching times as well as power losses are increased.
In this article the authors suggest to use a gate-side control loop to limit the switching transients. No extra Components are needed on the load side since the internal stray inductance of the power module is used to sense the current. The only extra component is a high voltage capacitor of some picoforads to sense the voltage transients. The overall losses are reduced compared to the traditional method, where the gate resistor value is increased to limit the switching speed. The proposed method can easily be integrated in an intelligent gate-drive circuit.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Christian Gerster
Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical engineering in 1990 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ), Zurich, Switzerland Currenlly working as research assistant at the Elec1rical Engineering and Design Lab(Prof. J. Hugel) at ETHZ towards the Ph.D. degree. Special interests are focused on design concepts for high Power IGBT-converters, specially using series connected IGBTs.
Patrick Hofer
Dipl.Ing. degree in electrical engineering in 1993 from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ). Zurich Switzerland Currently working as reserch assistant at the Electrical Engineering and Design Lab(Prof. J. Hugel) at ETHZ towards the Ph.D. degree Special interests are focused on design concepts for high power IGBT-converters, special using parallel connected IGBTs. (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology(ETHZ)-Gloriastr, 35-CH-8092 Zurich-Switzerland)