An analysis of turn-off behavior of planar and trench gate IGBTs under soft and hard switching conditions

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an investigation on turn-off behaviors of the planar and trench gate IGBTs under hard and soft switching conditions. Voltage and current waveforms and power losses are investigated through the simulation and experiment at various parameters of dv/dt, collector current, gate resistance and junction temperature. Moreover, electric potential and field distribution and carrier behavior inside the chips are studied by the simulation. It is noted that the trench gate IGBT has advantage over the planar gate IGBT for the hard switching application. On the other hand, the turn-off loss of the planar gate IGBT under soft switching application is slightly lower than that of the trench gate IGBT.