Characteristics of Trench gate and DMOS IGBTs in a ZCS single-ended resonant inverter

Abstract

The Trench Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) is widely regarded as a better power switching device over the DMOS IGBT in a wide range of conventional switching applications such as motor control and power conditioning for HVDC. It is also important to study the behaviour of Trench IGBTs in applications where resonant switching has inherent advantages over hard switching. A comparison of performance of the DMOS and Trench IGBT in a Zero Current Switching (ZCS) single-ended resonant inverter suitable for industrial induction cookers is presented. As the IGBTs switch at zero current in ZCS circuits, turn-on, reverse recovery and forward recovery losses are minimal compared to the conduction losses. The study is performed using the circuit simulator PSpice, two-dimensional numerical simulator MEDICI and an experimental test rig. It is concluded that the Trench gate IGBT with its lower on state voltage and lower on resistance shows better performance, particularly at high switching frequencies and high currents, over the DMOS IGBT in zero current switching resonant circuits.