Improved Gate Drive Circuit for High Power IGBTs with a Novel Overvoltage Protection Scheme

과전압 제한 기능을 갖는 새로운 IGBT 게이트 구동회로

In application of high power IGBT PWM inverters, the treatable power range is considerably limited due to the overvoltage caused by the stray inductance components within the power circuit. This paper proposes a new gate drive circuit for IGBTs which can actively suppress the overvoltage across the driven IGBT at turn-off and the overvoltage across the opposite IGBT at turn-on while preserving the most simple and reliable power circuit. The turn-off driving scheme has adaptive feature to the amplitude of collector current, so that the overvoltage is limited much effectively at the larger collector current. The turn-on scheme is to decrease the rising rate of the collector current by increasing input capacitance during turn-on transient when the gate-emitter voltage is greater than threshold voltage. The experimental results under various normal and fault conditions prove the effectiveness of the proposed circuit.