An energy recovery based low loss resonant gate driver circuit for Silicon Carbide MOSFETs

Abstract

Silicon Carbide (SiC) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are capable of processing high power at high switching frequencies with less switching losses and conduction losses. As the operating switching frequency increases, the gate driver power requirements of MOSFETs also increase. The power taken from the gate supply is dissipated in the gate resistance. Instead of dissipating all the gate drive energy, some energy can be recovered or recycled by utilizing the principle of resonance. This reduces the net power being taken from the gate supply. This paper presents a new resonant gate driver circuit which consumes less power compared to the conventional gate driver circuit at high switching frequencies. The proposed gate driver is designed for SiC MOSFETs. To verify the proposed gate driver, the experimental results are presented in this paper. The proposed circuit has achieved nearly 50% reduction in gate drive power consumption compared to the conventional circuit.