Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS
Volume 61, Issue 10, Pages 5570-5581Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TIE.2013.2297304
Keywords
Desaturation; overcurrent protection; silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs); solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB)
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Funding
- II-VI Foundation
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Program
- Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation
- Department of Energy under the National Science Foundation [EEC-1041877]
- Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks Industry Partnership Program
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Overcurrent protection of silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) remains a challenge due to lack of practical knowledge. This paper presents three overcurrent protection methods to improve the reliability and overall cost of SiC MOSFET-based converters. First, a solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) composed primarily by a Si IGBT and a commercial gate driver IC is connected in series with the dc bus to detect and clear overcurrent faults. Second, the desaturation technique using a sensing diode to detect the drain-source voltage under overcurrent faults is implemented as well. Third, a novel active overcurrent protection scheme through dynamic evaluation of fault current level is proposed. The design considerations and potential issues of the protection methods are described and analyzed in detail. A phase-leg configuration-based step-down converter is built to evaluate the performance of the protection schemes under various conditions, considering variation of fault type, decoupling capacitance, protection circuit parameters, etc. Finally, a comparison is made in terms of fault response time, temperature-dependent characteristics, and applications to help designers select a proper protection method.
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