Online Junction Temperature Monitoring Using Intelligent Gate Drive for SiC Power Devices

Junction temperature is an important design/operation parameter, as well as, a significant indicator of device's health condition for power electronics converters. Compared to its silicon (Si) counterparts, it is more critical for silicon carbide (SiC) devices due to the reliability concern introduced by the immaturity of new material and packaging. This paper proposes a practical implementation using an intelligent gate drive for online junction temperature monitoring of SiC devices based on turn-
off
delay time as the thermo-sensitive electrical parameter. First, the sensitivity of turn-
off
delay time on the junction temperature for fast switching SiC devices is analyzed. A gate impedance regulation assist circuit is proposed to enhance the sensitivity by a factor of 60 and approach 736 ps/°C tested in the case study with little penalty on the power conversion performance. Next, an online monitoring unit based on gate assist circuits is developed to monitor the turn-
off
delay time in real time with the resolution less than 104 ps. As a result, the micro-controller is capable of “reading” junction temperature during the converter operation. Finally, a SiC-based half-bridge inverter is constructed with an intelligent gate drive consisting of the gate impedance regulation circuit and online turn-
off
delay time monitoring unit. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed approach.