Design and evaluation of a high performance silicon carbide MOSFET driver

In recent years, the technology of wide bandgap devices has developed rapidly and its commercialization also getting higher and higher. Silicon Carbide (SiC) Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor (MOSFETs) are gradually replacing traditional silicon-based devices such as IGBTs in high-voltage, high-frequency, higherature applications due to their higher breakdown filed strength, lower switching losses, better thermal stability and thermal conductivity [1]. Of course, this also puts higher requirements and challenges on the drive design of SiC MOSFETs. The gate drivers for conventional silicon-based devices cannot be directly applied to SiC MOSFETs [2]. And the mature silicon carbide driver products on the market are few and expensive. Therefore, a general drive design for discrete SiC MOSFETs is proposed here, with high switching frequency, reliable fault isolation, fast fault detection and very small size. It also clarifies the key points and important parameter calculation criteria of the proposed drive circuit, then builds a double pulse test (DPT) platform to evaluate the performance of the gate driver board.