A Novel Gate Drive Circuit for Suppressing Turn-on Oscillation of Non-Kelvin Packaged SiC MOSFET

Abstract

Compared with a silicon MOSFET device, the SiC MOSFET has many benefits, such as higher breakdown voltage, faster action speed and better thermal conductivity. These advantages enable the SiC MOSFET to operate at higher switching frequencies, while, as the switching frequency increases, the turn-on loss accounts for most of the loss. This characteristic severely limits the applications of the SiC MOSFET at higher switching frequencies. Accordingly, an SRD-type drive circuit for a SiC MOSFET is proposed in this paper. The proposed SRD-type drive circuit can suppress the turn-on oscillation of a non-Kelvin packaged SiC MOSFET to ensure that the SiC MOSFET can work at a faster turn-on speed with a lower turn-on loss. In this paper, the basic principle of the proposed SRD-type drive circuit is analyzed, and a double pulse platform is established. For the purpose of proof-testing the performance of the presented SRD-type drive circuit, comparisons and experimental verifications between the traditional gate driver and the proposed SRD-type drive circuit were conducted. Our experimental results finally demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed SRD-type drive circuit.