Control of incoming drain currents drawn by super-junction MOSFETs in voltage source bridge-legs

Feng, Zhengyang and McNeill, Neville and Williams, Barry; (2020) Control of incoming drain currents drawn by super-junction MOSFETs in voltage source bridge-legs. In: 2020 9th International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Application (ICRERA). IEEE, GBR, pp. 93-100. ISBN 978-1-7281-7369-6 (https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRERA49962.2020.9242794)

[thumbnail of Feng-etal-ICRERA-2020-Control-of-incoming-drain-currents-drawn-by-super-junction]
Preview
Text. Filename: Feng_etal_ICRERA_2020_Control_of_incoming_drain_currents_drawn_by_super_junction.pdf
Accepted Author Manuscript

Download (732kB)| Preview

Abstract

To increase the efficiency of renewable energy power conversion systems, traditional silicon IGBTs can be replaced with silicon super-junction MOSFETs. However, the poor performance of the MOSFET's intrinsic diode and the output capacitance present difficulties in voltage source converter bridge-legs. When a MOSFET in this circuit turns on, a charging current has to be sourced into the output capacitance of the complementary freewheeling MOSFET, even if the diode has been deactivated. The peak incoming drain current into the MOSFET turning on can be limited by using a large resistance in series with its gate. However, this increases MOSFET power dissipation. Also, the turn-on propagation delay time is increased. This paper presents a gate driver circuit for profiling the MOSFET's incoming drain current to provide an improved trade-off between incoming peak current, turn-on power dissipation, and delay time.