An Adaptive Current-Source Gate Driver for High-Voltage SiC mosfets

This article presents a novel current-source gate driver for Silicon Carbide (SiC) metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (mosfets) with adaptive functionalities. The proposed driver aims to decouple and improve controllability of $di/dt$, $dv/dt$, as well as to decrease turn-on and turn-offdelay times compared to conventional totem-pole voltage-source gate drivers and conventional current-source gate drivers. The circuit topology of the proposed gate driver and the working principle are analyzed for the turn-on and turn-offprocesses. Furthermore, the driving requirements in terms of gate voltage and gate current for SiC mosfets that determine the design and tuning of gate drivers are presented. The performance of the proposed gate driver is validated experimentally on a 3.3 kV/750 A SiC mosfet half-bridge power module. It is shown that, compared to conventional voltage-source gate drivers, the driver is capable of significantly reducing turn-on and turn-offdelay times by approximately 57% and 33%, respectively. Moreover, the proposed gate driver enables 233% controllability of $di/dt$ and 87% of $dv/dt$.