A Load Adaptive Intelligent IGBT Gate Drive

Insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is widely used in high power electronics converters as the key devices. The reliability and efficiency of converters are highly related to the IGBTs. For converters with various loads and inverters whose transient power changes periodically, when the load current is high, the IGBT switching stresses are high due to the parasitic parameters. Thus, the switching speed should be controlled. But the switching stresses are low under light load, and the same switching stresses control method will lead to high switching losses, decreasing the converter efficiency. To solve the problem, this paper proposed a closed loop active gate drive based on adaptive control. The feedback parameter is adaptive to the load current to optimize the IGBT switching losses under various loads. Thus, the converter reliability and efficiency are both improved. And then a 5kW Buck converter prototype is built to verify the theoretical analysis.