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Abstract - From small voltage regulators to large instance: Si IGBT can handle a voltage up to 5000V but
motor drives, power electronics play a very important due to its bipolar nature, its switching frequency is limited
role in present day technology. The power electronics to 10 kHz. Si MOSFET can handle switching frequency
market is currently dominated by silicon based of several MHz, but due to its high ON state resistance the
devices. However due to inherent limitations of silicon use of MOSFET is restricted to low voltage application.
material they are approaching thermal limit in terms Also operation of Si based power device is restricted to
of high power and high temperature operation. 1500C. It's the time to turn our focus on devices with
Performance can only be improved with the better material characteristics.
development of new power devices with better
material properties. Silicon Carbide devices are now II. CHARACTERISTICS OF SIC MOSFETS
gaining popularity as next generation semiconductor
devices. Due to its inherent material properties such as The SiC MOSFET has unique capabilities such as lower
high breakdown field, wide band gap, high electron switching and conduction losses that make it superior
saturation velocity, and high thermal conductivity, when compared to its silicon counterparts. These unique
they serve as a better alternative to the silicon capabilities are attributed to the material properties of
counterparts. Here an attempt is made to study the silicon carbide. Silicon carbide is made of equal part of
unique properties of SiC MOSFET and requirements silicon and carbon via covalent bonding. It possesses
for designing a gate drive circuit for the same. The many favorable properties making it useful for high
switching characteristics of SCH2080KE are analyzed temperature, high frequency and high power applications.
using LTspice by performing double pulse test. Also A comparison of silicon and silicon carbide material
driver circuit is designed for SiC MOSFET properties is shown in table below.
SCH2080KE and its performance is tested by
implementing a buck converter.
Parameter Silicon Silicon Benefits
I. INTRODUCTION Carbide
Band gap 1.1eV 3.3eV Higher Tj
Power Electronics play an important role in present day 8 8
Critical 0:3X10 3X10 Lower RDS-ON
technology. They cover lot of areas including industry, Electric Field V/cm V/cm
transportation, utility system, space technology etc. In
developed countries it is estimated that around 60% of Electron 1X107 cm/s 2X107 High operating
electrical energy goes through some kind of power Saturation cm/s frequency
Velocity
electronic converter before its final usage.
The present power electronics market is dominated by Thermal 1.5W/cmK 5W/cmK High thermal
Conductivity stability
silicon based devices. However they are approaching their
thermal limit, due to its inherent limitations in material
characteristics such as However to properly design an appropriate gate
1. Narrow Band gap drive for SiC MOSFET, its unique operating
2. Low thermal conductivity characteristics must be taken into consideration. The
3. Low breakdown voltage. output characteristics of a typical 1200V 32A SiC
Hence Silicon (Si) based power devices are MOSFET (SCH2080KE) is shown in Fig 1. We can see
inadequate to meet the growing needs, especially in high that transition from ohmic to saturation region is not
voltage, high efficiency and high power applications. For clearly defined. This is due to modest trans-conductance.
This characteristic plays a vital role while designing fault 4. External gate resistance must be appropriately selected
protection circuits (especially DESAT protection) as drain for minimizing or eliminating ringing in gate drive circuit.
to source voltage does not increase much with fault 5. Parasitic must be minimized. So gate driver must be
current. located as close as possible to the gate.
6. It is recommended to connect a 10k between gate and
source to prevent excessive floating of gate during
propagation delay.
The gate drive circuits for MOSFETs can be of two
types: isolated and non-isolated gate drivers. In this driver
circuit an optically isolated driver IC TLP250 is used.
Peak output current of the driver selected must be high
enough, so that it can meet the peak gate current
requirements of MOSFET. The peak gate current (Ig)
depends on the rate of rise of gate charge (Qg).
ொ ଽ୬େ
ܫ ൌ ௗ௧ ൌ ୬ୱ
= 1.28A
Hence compromise must be made between switching clamping diode. Since the forward voltage drop of
speed and ringing in gate circuit. To avoid ringing in the clamping diode is small compared to the supply voltage,
circuit gate resistance must be greater than 3.86Ω. the decay in inductor current will be negligible as long as
In this we are implementing a buck converter with
OFF period is kept short.
SiC MOSFET as switch, to test the performance of gate
driver circuit. The output requirements are 10V, 1A. The Now the pulse two again turns ON DUT, under the
circuit diagram is shown in Figure 4. The voltage and
current requirements of buck converter are
ೌೣ ିబ
L0 ൌ ܶ
οூ
Value of output capacitor is given as, load current established in the inductor. This pulse can be
οூ
C0 ൌ kept short to minimize the switching losses in DUT as the
଼ο ೞೢ
waveforms of drain to source voltage and drain current
are primary matter of interest. In this paper switching
losses are estimated by performing the double pulse test
using simulation tool LTSpice.
V. SIMULATION STUDY
Following figures show the variation of switching loss A comparison of switching losses of SiC MOSFET
with different gate resistors. Gate resistors used are 10Ω, (SCH2080KE) is done at two different temperatures -
5Ω and 7.3Ω. We can see that as gate resistor increases 320C and 1250C and is shown in the table below.
turn ON and turn OFF time increases. This results in Turn OFF Turn ON
greater switching losses. So to decrease switching losses Current Losses(μJ) Losses(μJ)
it is better to have lower gate resistor. 320C 1250C 320C 1250C
10A 12.32 14.48 26.048 24.51
20A 31.238 59.89 91.823 86.203
30A 71.44 115.42 168.07 151.79
V. HARDWARE RESULTS
REFERENCES
Figure 14 Output of Gate Driver IC [1] "Silicon Carbide power devices and modules" Rohm semiconductor
application note, June 2013.
[2] Hangseok Choi "Overview of silicon carbide power devices"
Fairchild semiconductor application note.
[3] Sam Davis "1200V SiC MOSFET Poised to Replace Si MOSFETs
and IGBTs" Power Electronic Technology, pp.36-40, February 2011.
[4] Julius Rice,John MookKen "Silicon carbide MOSFET gate drive
design consideration" IEEE ,pp.24-27, January 2015.
[5] P. Friedrichs. “SiC power devices for industrial applications,” Power
Electronics Conference (IPEC), 2010 International, 2010, pp. 3241-
3248.
[6] "IGBT/MOSFET Gate Drive Opto-coupler" Vishay semiconductor
application note 91, 24 October 2011.
[7] Carl Mikael Zetterling, “Present and future applications of Silicon
Carbide devices and circuits”, proceedings of the 2012 IEEE Custom
Figure 15 Output of Buck Converter Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), San Jose, CA, Sept. 2012, pp:1–
8
[8] Bob Callanan, "SiC mosfet isolated gate driver," Cree Application
Following table shows the variation of ON state Notes, 2012.
voltage drop with gate to source voltage. In this drain to
source voltage is kept a constant and gate to source
voltage is varied from 14V to 18V. The On state voltage
drop is noted for each gate to source voltage. The on state
voltage drop corresponds to the on state drain to source
resistance. We can see that the drop is least for 18V.