Active gate driving method for reliability improvement of IGBTs via junction temperature swing reduction

This paper introduces an advanced gate driver used as thermal swing control method for the reduction of AC load current-related ΔTj in Insulated-Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs). A switchable gate resistor network is applied to the advanced gate driver, so that the switching power losses can be changed according to the amplitude of AC current. Accordingly, a closed-loop thermal control method including the functions of root-mean-square calculation and phase analysis is proposed. Hence ΔTj can be reduced by means of changing losses-related gate resistors on the basis of output fundamental frequency and amplitude of AC load current. As a result, longer device useful life duration can be achieved. Furthermore, the maximum junction temperature under high-temperature operation can be reduced by means of the proposed method. Simulations and experiments are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed active gate driver.