Great improvement in turn-on power dissipation of IGBTs with an extra gate charging function

Abstract

This paper presents a new gate drive circuit using an extra RC-network to realize low turn-on dissipation of IGBTs. The extra capacitance in the gate circuit assists in charging Miller capacitance, therefore the collector voltage tail region during the turn-on period can be reduced drastically without the turn-on dI/sub c//dt increasing. The proposed gate drive method has been achieved 40% reduction in the turn-on switching power dissipation of 1200V-150A IGBT compared with the conventional gate driving.