A MCT-based zero voltage switching PWM inverter

This paper presents a MOS-controlled thyristor (MCT) based zero voltage switching (ZVS) scheme for PWM inverters. The proposed scheme utilizes a front end DC voltage notching circuit consisting of auxiliary switches and resonant components. This allows the DC link voltage to be brought to zero on command. MCTs are used as auxiliary devices since MCTs were designed for enhanced dynamic performance under ZVS conditions. A detailed analysis of the circuit operation is presented. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is experimentally verified on an inverter.