Bridge-arm current reduction in DC-AC inverter

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhen building single-phase inverter with power Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFET), switching action may cause poor reverse recovery characteristic due to body parasitic diode of MOSFET, which can produce peak current in the circuit loop and the high transient voltage and current (dv/dt, di/dt) during the turning-on period. In this article, a novel method to reduce the bridge arm current spike in DC-AC inverter is proposed. The presented method uses the improved and simplified coupled inductor which is connected between the upper and lower power devices. The parasitic capacitors of MOSFET are charged and discharged by the coupled inductor and the energy is released in the new loop; therefore, the bridge peak current is diminished. The time-domain model of transient-state analyses is given in detail. The current spike of the main switch is clamped efficiently. By increasing switching frequency, the volume of the magnetic core can be further reduced which is resulted from reduction in the reverse recovery current in parasitic diode. Because of the suppression of the spike current via the device, the switch-on loss of the power loss is reduced, and low on-state resistor of the power device can be adopted to suppress the conduction loss. The proposed approaches are validated with experimental results.