Achieving Higher Power Density With Good-Old Si MOSFETs [Expert View]

In 1984 I had the honor of travelling around Europe with the great Rudy Severns on a new technology teaching tour for Siliconix. I was a young applications engineer and the new technology then was the silicon power MOSFET. Engineers were using bipolar transistors in their switching power supplies, and Rudy in his “Advanced Power MOSFET Seminar” pointed out the many advantages of the silicon (Si) MOSFET, which offered higher switching frequencies and lower power losses. Rudy discussed how to use and apply them correctly and how to overcome various dV/dt failure modes when switching inductive loads.