High-temperature characteristics of IGBTs in soft- and hard-switching converters

This paper reports on the experimental and theoretical performances of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) characteristics at elevated temperatures when used in soft- and hard-switching converters. It is shown that di/dt-dependent turn-on voltage spike and dynamic forward voltage saturation occur due to conductivity modulation lag in the drift region. During turn-off, temperature- and dv/dt-dependent elevated current waveforms were measured that are caused by the minority carrier storage and recombination in the drift region of the device. The measured data is shown to be in excellent agreement with the simulated results over the entire range of dv/dt, di/dt and temperature variations. The simulations were performed using an advanced mixed device and circuit simulator in which device carrier dynamics was studied under boundary conditions imposed by circuit operation.<>