Abstract:
EMI has remained a limiting factor in driving the SiC MOSFETs to its maximum potential
and achieving a trade-off between EMI and switching losses is a major challenge for the designers. In this
paper, an inductor-less, discontinuous current source gate driver (DCSD) is proposed. Exclusion of inductor
results in a compact footprint and easy integration in IC form. The absence of predriver for proposed DCSD
reduces the complexity of the driver, making it easier to control and implement. In addition, very low
propagation delay is attained with the proposed DCSD which allows SiC MOSFETs to switch at higher
switching frequencies with low losses. The proposed DCSD is compared with a commercially available
reference gate driver for SiC MOSFET, and the results are analyzed and validated with hardware prototype.
A better trade-off between switching losses and EMI is obtained with the proposed driver, where during
turn-off, a 65% reduction in dVds/dt and 45% reduction in dId /dt is achieved at the cost of 33% increase in
the total switching loss.
