Analysis of short circuit type II and III of high voltage SiC MOSFETs with fast current source gate drive principle

• The Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFET is considered to be the leading candidate for future 1.7 kV and 3.3 kV switches in 2-level voltage source converters (VSC) up to 2 MW. For those converters, short circuit (SC) in the dc-link loop can occur due to a number of reasons, e.g. faulty semiconductor modules, faulty gate drivers (GDs), or electro-magnetic interference (EMI). Termination of such SCs is important in order to protect components and reduce the damage in the converter box. This paper presents a new short circuit protection scheme based on a universal current-source GD principle without dedicated hardware components. The performance of the design is evaluated for SC in the dc-link loop under load conditions, called type II and type III. Moreover, measurement results are presented using the proposed GD connected to a 1700 V 300 A SiC MOSFET tested during SC type II and III at two different dc-link stray inductances, 30 nH and 100 nH, and at two different temperatures, 25 °C and 125 °C. The conclusions are that the proposed scheme is able to terminate both SC type II and III with fast reaction time, with low energy dissipation, with a margin of about 15 times below the destructive level for dc-link voltages and load currents up to 1050 V and 300 A respectively.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik -- Annan elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering -- Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

FPGA

Gate Drive

Short Circuit

SiC MOSFET

Energy dissipation

Field programmable gate arrays (FPGA)

HVDC power transmission

Motion control

Power control

Power converters

Power electronics

Reconfigurable hardware

Short circuit currents

Silicon carbide

Wide band gap semiconductors

Gate drives

Low energy dissipations

Magnetic interference

Semiconductor modules

Short-circuit protection

Silicon carbide MOSFETs

Voltage source converters

MOSFET devices

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)