Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS
Volume 29, Issue 7, Pages 3720-3732Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2013.2278794
Keywords
Active gate driver (AGD); IGBT modules; Miller plateau; overcurrent protection; short circuit
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Funding
- II-VI Foundation
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the U.S. Department of Energy's Vehicle Technologies Program
- Department of Energy under the National Science Foundation Award [EEC-1041877]
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This paper presents an active gate driver (AGD) for IGBT modules to improve their overall performance under normal condition as well as fault condition. Specifically, during normal switching transients, a di/dt feedback controlled current source and current sink is introduced together with a push-pull buffer for dynamic gate current control. Compared to a conventional gate drive strategy, the proposed one has the capability of reducing the switching loss, delay time, and Miller plateau duration during turn-on and turn-off transient without sacrificing current and voltage stress. Under overcurrent condition, it provides a fast protection function for IGBT modules based on the evaluation of fault current level through the di/dt feedback signal. Moreover, the AGD features flexible protection modes, which overcomes the interruption of converter operation in the event of momentary short circuits. A step-down converter is built to evaluate the performance of the proposed driving schemes under various conditions, considering variation of turn-on/off gate resistance, current levels, and short-circuit fault types. Experimental results and detailed analysis are presented to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach.
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