Recently, the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is widely used for various applications because of its improvement in reduction of on-resistance and fast switching. IGBT has a variety of uses, from home appliances to industrial applications. Fo...
Recently, the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is widely used for various applications because of its improvement in reduction of on-resistance and fast switching. IGBT has a variety of uses, from home appliances to industrial applications. For instance, demand for high power and voltage IGBT in high power servo-motor, air conditioners, UPS, high speed trains, and Hybrid Electric Cars has been increased due to increasing use of the inverter applications.
As the power capacity of power devices increases, the size of parasitic capacitance in the device to increase as well. The switching speed of power devices is directly related to the size of input capacitance. In order to drive high power devices adequately, a high gate-drive current is required. Also, protection circuits are required to protect the device from its fault conditions such as over-current, short-circuit current, overvoltage and low gate-drive voltage. In particular, IGBT's SOA(Safe Operation Area), must be ensured under the short circuit condition by the soft shutdown protection.
This dissertation provides design and experimental results of gate drive and protection IC for high power devices. It has the high drive current capability of 4 Amp maximum sourcing current and 8 Amp maximum sinking current with various protection schemes. The process used for the gate drive IC is 0.35um BCDMOS of Dongbu-HiTek. The designed IC has been tested and verified with high power IGBTs under both half-bridge and inverter systems.