Concept of the bridge leg with mixed normally-ON & normally-OFF SiC JFETs

The paper presents a new concept of the power electronics inverter built with Silicon Carbide devices. In order to reduce problems with protection of the system with normally-ON JFETs, each bridge leg is built with mixed devices: normally-ON and normally-OFF. Due to lower on-state resistance and less complex driving of the normally-ON JFETs, proposed inverter offers better performance in comparison to the inverter built with normally-OFF JFETs only. Novel concept is verified by various experimental tests of the 2kVA H-bridge with special attention to safety issues.