Design and evaluation of a high-current gate driver circuit for six paralleled 1.2kV 36A SiC MOSFETs

Abstract

Fast switching of SiC MOSFETs in high frequency converters can be realized with an optimized gate driver. IXYS IXDD614 high-speed gate drivers can be used to deliver a source and sink peak current of 14A with gate voltage rise and fall times of less than 30ns to drive six paralleled 1.2kV 36A SiC MOSFETs. In this paper, a reliable and efficient gate driver is designed, evaluated, and experimentally validated to provide sufficient gate current for minimum on-resistance, fast switching operation, good noise immunity, and wide range of duty cycles and switching frequencies without significant self-heating. Also, the effect of the gate resistance on the gate driver performance is examined for different frequencies. The parasitic inductance values of the copper traces are analyzed using ANSYS Q3D Extractor. The designed gate driver without bootstrap capacitance can drive either the top or bottom switches of the six paralleled 1.2kV 36A SiC MOSFETs H-bridge converter module.