Performance characterization of MOS turn off thyristors

Recently, power semiconductor devices that combine the technology of MOS turn-off and bipolar conduction have been introduced for operation at high voltage and current levels. The MOS turn off thyristor (MTO/sup TM/) is a switching device based on the gate turn off thyristor. This paper is devoted to presenting the results from a study performed to examine the operating characteristics of the MTO/sup TM/. The study included experimental measurements of on-state properties and switching characteristics under snubberless hard switching. Turn off loss, device switching delay time, storage time, transition time and on-state losses are characterized. In addition to the experimental results, the paper also presents a brief review of operation of the device and the experimental procedure used in the study.