Abstract
A switching characterization (SC) test of power semiconductor devices (PSDs) gives us significant insight into the dynamic switching behavior of the device under various operating conditions. A double pulse test (DPT) is a widely used method for evaluating switching performance parameters of a PSD such as its switching losses, switching speed (di/dt, dv/dt), turn-on and turn-off times etc. The scientific information obtained from analysis of DPT results of a PSD helps in predicting its thermo-electric performance in a target power electronic converter. With conventional DPT setups, it is a time-consuming and error-prone process to manually conduct these tests under several permutations of test parameters and thereafter analyze the experimental data manually. This work presents a newly developed automated SC test system, which can run tests one after another, once the desired test parameters are entered in a graphic user interface. The test-control system also enables recording and systematic processing of the experimental switching data to deliver usable characterization results. The automatic, compact and modular design allows the proposed SC test platform to stand out from the conventional DPT setups. The design principles are experimentally verified by implementing a hardware prototype capable of testing PSDs up to 1000 V, 60 A, 250 °C.
Highlights
Power electronic (PE) converters play a significant role in efficient control, conversion and conditioning of electric power in today’s energy systems
The main goal of this paper is to introduce the design and implementation techniques of an advanced automatic device characterization tool for evaluating the dynamic behaviour of power semiconductor devices (PSDs)
DEVICE CURRENT The device under test (DUT) is tested in a range of IC = 10–60 A to observe the variation in its dynamic performance
Summary
Power electronic (PE) converters play a significant role in efficient control, conversion and conditioning of electric power in today’s energy systems. The dynamic performance of the PSDs has a significant impact on the efficiency and power density of these PE systems [2]–[8]. A thorough characterization of the PSD’s switching parameters is necessary for correct converter loss estimations and possible optimizations to minimize these losses. The purpose of switching characterization (SC) is to study and evaluate the dynamic behavior of a device under test (DUT) for a range of conditions. The data obtained from the tests can greatly facilitate PE converter design such as selection of switching frequency & dead time, thermal management & gate-drive circuit design and efficiency estimation [11]–[13]. A double pulse test (DPT) is a widely accepted method to extract the
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