A Cost-effective, Compact, Automatic Testing System for Dynamic Characterization of Power Semiconductor Devices

A Double Pulse Tester (DPT) is a widely used setup for evaluating the switching behaviour of power semiconductor devices. The results obtained from double pulse tests provide significant insight into the dynamic behaviour of a device under test such as its switching losses, switching speed (di/dt, dv/dt), turn-on and off times etc. However, it is a tedious process to perform these tests under different permutations of test parameters and thereafter analyze the experimental data manually. This work presents a newly developed automated DPT prototype, which can run the tests one after another once the test conditions are entered in a Graphic User Interface. The test-control system also records the switching waveforms, test data, and systematically processes them to generate usable characterization results. The automatic, low cost, compact, modular and user-friendly design allows the proposed testing and measurement system to stand out from the conventional DPT setups. The design principles are experimentally verified by implementing a DPT prototype capable of testing power semiconductor devices up to 1000 V, 60 A and 250 °C.