An active driving circuit for high-voltage high-power SI-thyristor

The high-voltage, high-power SI-Thyristor (SI-Thy) is developed and is being produced to be applied in many power electronics applications. Compared with GTO, the new product has the characteristics of high speed turn on-off low loss and high switching frequency at high voltage. Because of the special characteristics of the SI-Thyristor, its control with the conventional driving circuit used for the GTO is insufficient. Then, a new and compact gate drive is developed. It is composed of a driving circuit capable of driving at high-voltage with high-speed and high-frequency and an isolated controlled power supply. The driving circuit is presented and proposed as an efficient tool for the SI-Thyristor control.