New Resonant Gate Driver Circuit for High-Frequency Application of Silicon Carbide MOSFETs

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are capable of processing high power at high switching frequencies with less switching losses and conduction losses. The gate driver circuit power consumption is directly proportional to the switching frequency. The power taken from the gate supply is dissipated in the gate resistance of the conventional gate driver (CGD) circuit. Instead of dissipating all the gate driver energy, some energy can be recovered or recycled by utilizing the principle of resonance. This reduces the net power being taken from the gate supply. This paper presents a new resonant gate driver (RGD) circuit which consumes less power compared to the CGD circuit at high switching frequencies. The proposed gate driver is designed for SiC MOSFETs. It can be modified appropriately to suit for insulated-gate bipolar transistors and other MOSFETs also. The performance of the proposed circuit is simulated in LTSpice environment, and an experimental prototype of the proposed circuit is developed to validate its performance. The proposed RGD circuit has achieved nearly 50% reduction in gate driver power consumption compared to the CGD circuit.