A New Multiresonant Gate Driver Circuit for SiC MOSFETs

Abstract

This article proposes design and implementation of a new multiresonant gate driver circuit for silicon carbide (SiC) metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). The proposed gate driver circuit consumes less power than a conventional gate driver (CGD) circuit at high switching frequency applications. Power consumption in the gate driver circuit is proportional to the operating switching frequency and is significant in higher switching frequency applications. A CGD circuit can provide unipolar gate pulses and all the energy provided to the gate driver is dissipated in the gate resistance. A resonant circuit can be used to recycle part of the energy stored in the gate capacitance and reduce the overall power consumption by the gate driver. For efficient operation of the MOSFET, it is desirable to provide unequal voltage levels during switching operation. In this study, a novel gate driving circuit is presented, which provides unequal voltage levels with clamping functionality utilizing higher order harmonics. A detailed analysis of the gate driving power loss is provided. In addition, detailed design procedure, and experimental verification are presented. According to the experimental results, the proposed gate driver can reduce up to 65% of the gate driver power consumption compared to a CGD circuit.