Fully integrated high voltage high current gate driver for MOSFET-inverters

Abstract

A new gate driver IC in SOI technology is presented which integrates all primary and secondary side driver functions for a three-phase MOSFET power inverter system and with brake chopper on a single chip. Thanks to the used SOI technology which blocks voltages in both directions an unique property of the IC is the potential separation for each secondary side thus allowing a decoupling from the primary side as known from solutions with galvanic isolation. For control and fault signal transmission advanced level shifter circuits are used. The IC furthermore includes short circuit protection (VDS-monitoring for each switch), operation voltage monitoring and advanced error management with detailed error read-out. The presented static and dynamic measurement results demonstrate the driver performance and the regular operation in the inverter system.