Benchmarking and Qualification of Gate Drivers for Medium Voltage (MV) Operation Using 10 Kv Silicon Carbide (SiC) Mosfets

Emergence of reliable medium voltage (MV) silicon carbide (SiC) devices, has made it possible to use these for MV applications, including grid interconnections, and medium voltage drives system. In a converter structure, the isolated power supplies of the gate drivers for these MV devices experience a peak stress up to 15 kV and a very high dv/dt (up to 100 kV/μs). Exposing the gate driver to such harsh conditions leads to various challenges in providing the required insulation, and maintaining the signal fidelity (due to common mode (CM) currents across the parasitic capacitance of the transformer). The failure of gate drivers at a converter level can lead to destructive damage to the converter. This calls for a methodology to design, test and qualify the gate drivers before implementing them in the field for long-term operation. This paper provides a detailed design methodology and analysis to qualify the gate drivers for a long-term operation. The analysis and design-phase ensures reliable operation of the gate driver, and the testing and qualifying phase ensures long-term operation of the gate driver. The experimental test setup has been built and test results have been provided based on a gate driver designed for 10 kV SiC MOSFETs. © 2019 IEEE.