Performance Comparison Between Voltage Source and Current Source Gate Drive Systems

This paper presents the comparison of two gate driver boards, which are operated with the same power module. One solution is realized using a gate current control driver IC, while the other solution uses a conventional gate driver IC with external buffer. The power module is a 1200 A / 1200 V module designed for high power applications. The paper compares the functionality of both boards and analyses the switching performance. As comparative condition, the turn-on collector-emitter slew rate of dvCE/dt = 5 V/ns is used. Particular interest is in the evaluation of the turn-on energy.