A Novel Temperature Sensitive Electrical Parameter of IGBT Modules Without Involvement of Operating Parameters

The junction temperature estimation of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) module is crucial for reliability assessment and health management of converters. However, most of the existing methods need to measure the collector-emitter voltage and collector current for the IGBT junction temperature estimation, which increases the cost and complexity of the monitoring and calibration process. In this article, a novel junction temperature monitoring method for IGBT modules without involving operating condition calibration based on the pre-overshoot of gate voltage is proposed. The gate pre-overshoot is influenced by the internal gate resistor, which has a linear relationship with the IGBT junction temperature. Besides, the gate pre-overshoot is only temperature dependent, while not affected by the collector-emitter voltage and collector current. Therefore, the gate pre-overshoot is a promising temperature-sensitive electrical parameter (TSEP). Because the collector-emitter voltage and collector current are not involved, the gate pre-overshoot-based method for junction temperature has the advantages of a simple signal monitoring structure, a simple calculation process, and a simple calibration process.