Driver stage implementation with improved turn-on and turn-off delay for wide band gap devices

Abstract

This paper presents a driver topology intended for WBG devices with the goal of improving the switching performance. In particular, the initial delay time of the switching transient was targeted. In high power and high frequency bridge converters, the dead time causes output voltage waveform distortion and increases losses. Shorter delay time leads to shorter dead time requirement. Simulations show that the delay time can be minimised by correctly implementing the suggested driver stage. For the experimental validation, an improvement of 6-8 ns was demonstrated while keeping the same di/dt and dv/dt as a conventional gate driver. The improvement increases with increasing gate resistance.