A Compact Gate Control and Voltage-Balancing Circuit for Series-Connected SiC MOSFETs and Its Application in a DC Breaker

This paper presents a novel compact circuit combining function of gate control and voltage balancing for series-connected silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). Two series-connected SiC MOSFETs with the proposed circuit only require a single standard gate d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on industrial electronics (1982) 2017-10, Vol.64 (10), p.8299-8309
Main Authors: Ren, Yu, Yang, Xu, Zhang, Fan, Wang, Kangping, Chen, Wenjie, Wang, Laili, Pei, Yunqing
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
DC circuit breaker
Electric potential
Field effect transistors
gate control
Logic gates
MOSFET
MOSFETs
Passive components
Semiconductor devices
series connection
SiC MOSFET
Silicon
Silicon carbide
Steady-state
Switched mode power supplies
Switching
Topology
voltage balancing
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Summary:This paper presents a novel compact circuit combining function of gate control and voltage balancing for series-connected silicon carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET). Two series-connected SiC MOSFETs with the proposed circuit only require a single standard gate driver to achieve the gate control and voltage balancing during both steady-state and switching transition. Moreover, the proposed circuit is only composed of ten passive components. Therefore, the proposed circuit provides a low-cost and highly reliable method to increase the blocking voltage of the SiC MOSFET. The operation principles of the proposed circuit are theoretically analyzed. In addition, the high-blocking-voltage device is not only required in switching-mode power supply (SMPS) but also in dc-breaker applications. The proposed circuit is then modified to make it suitable to the dc-breaker applications. The simulation and experimental results validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed circuit in both SMPS and dc-breaker applications.
ISSN:0278-0046
1557-9948
DOI:10.1109/TIE.2017.2711579