An Integrated Active Gate Driver for SiC MOSFETs

Silicon carbide (SiC) power devices operate at high switching frequencies with high voltages and good stabilities owing to their advantages in excellent breakdown field strength, heat dissipation characteristics, and electron saturation velocity, and so on. Therefore, SiC-based systems can achieve a high power density compared to conventional Si-based systems. However, high dv/dt and di/dt accompanied with high-speed switching operations can cause EMI noise issues. Traditional gate drivers cannot actively control such EMI noise problems. This digest proposes an integrated active gate driver (AGD) to solve the noise issues. The proposed AGD controls the switching speed through controllable AGD voltages in real-time according to the system feedbacks such as the DC-link voltage, output current, and device temperature. The proposed AGD enables switching devices to control the switching speed accurately under various system operational conditions. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the proposed method.