Active Gate Driver And Switching Characterisation For High-Power IGBT Modules

Abstract

In modern power electronic systems, the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) power modules are the main workhorse and play a more and more important role. Their application fields include transportation traction, renewable energy systems, high-voltage electric power transmission systems and industrial motor drives. This thesis focuses on the IGBT module’s dynamic characteristics and the state-of-the-art gate driving techniques. For the purpose of improving switching characteristics of high-power IGBT modules, candidate driving parameters for advanced active driving strategies are investigated and compared, and a novel current-source-based active gate driver is devised and experimental validated. To characterise the high-power IGBT modules and validate the effectiveness of the active gate driver, a double pulse test platform with wide testing conditions has been built with a generalised design procedure proposed. With the designed computer-aided software applied to the control and the data post-processing, both efficiency and accuracy of the test platform can be improved. Moreover, the transient current and voltage slopes controllability of high-power IGBT modules during turn-off transition is investigated. An effective and efficient evaluation method is proposed and validated for the module controllability assessment.