SiC Power Devices in Impedance Source Converters

Rąbkowski, Jacek

doi:10.4028/www.scientific.net/msf.897.701

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…On the other hand, normally‐ON JFET has a voltage‐controlled gate. Applications such as current‐source and impedance‐source inverters [23–25], high‐power modular multilevel converters [26] and DC circuit breakers can benefit from using normally‐ON SiC JFETs [27]. However, the normally‐ON characteristics of SiC JFETs impose severe driving challenges when employed in power converters.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A universal automatic and self‐powered gate driver power supply for normally‐ON SiC JFETs

Giannakis

Peftitsis

2021

IET Power Electronics

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Normally-ON silicon carbide junction-field-effect transistors have a simple design and exhibit advantageous performance in terms of losses, elevated junction temperatures and high switching frequencies. However, under a loss of power to their gate, normally-ON junction-field-effect transistors are subject to a shoot-through situation, which might be severe for their survivability. This paper presents a universal concept for an automatic and self-powered gate driver power supply circuit for normally-ON silicon carbide junctionfield-effect transistors employed in high input-impedance circuits. The power to the gate is supplied during start-up and steady-state operations through a mutually coupled inductor with the high input impedance inductor and by employing a typical low-voltage, power supply circuit. The performance of the proposed automatic and self-powered gate driver was evaluated on a DC/DC boost converter rated at 6 kW, as well as in a low-voltage solidstate DC circuit breaker. From experiments it is shown that using the proposed circuit, the start-up process requires approximately 350 s, while the steady-state switching process of the junction-field-effect transistor during steady-state is also shown. Using the proposed circuit in a low-voltage solid-state DC breaker, a fault current of 68 A is cleared within 155 s.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%