A low energy drive for high power 300 A-1000 V IGBT

A new concept for the IGBT (insulated gate bipolar transistor) drive circuit is described. This driver requires few components and draws little power. It is totally insulated, making it very interesting for building inverter legs. The driver performs well over the 50 Hz to 500 kHz range (more than is needed for IGBT-based power converters). Bistable operation allows for a very small pulse transformer even in the bottom end frequencies. The driving energy is transferred to the IGBT input capacity in a resonant mode. A prototype was built, and circuit operation is shown on oscilloscope plots.<
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