High‐speed gate driver circuit of SiC‐MOSFET for high temperature application

Abstract

In this study, a silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET driving circuit and its protection circuit applied to high temperature (HT) environment are designed by using commercial off-the-shelf discrete components. The proposed driving circuit can work at 200 °C with a low driving dissipation. An isolation structure with a transformer is utilised to prevent the control circuits from being disturbed by the power circuit. The high value of output driving voltage V GS is 19 V to ensure the low on-resistance of SiC MOSFET, while the low value of V GS is − 5 V to ensure the SiC MOSFET not be turned on mistakenly. The driving circuit also solves the the contradiction between the BJT switch speed and power dissipation of conventional HT SiC MOSFET driving circuit. The rising time and falling time of the output V GS are reduced greatly, which can increase the performance of SiC MOSFET in high frequency application at a HT.