Design and Comparison of Passive Gate Driver Solution for Series-connected Power Devices in DC Circuit Breaker Applications

The dc circuit breaker (DCCB) plays an important protection role in the dc distribution systems. And series power device stack is usually employed in the solid-state circuit breaker (SSCB) to meet the clamping voltage requirement. Among different gate driver methods, the single gate driver structures are very simple and cost-effective. Therefore, this paper firstly gives a comprehensive review of state of art single gate driver based series power device topologies. Then the performance and feasibility of different methods are compared in terms of SSCB applications. Furthermore, a new single gate driver solution is proposed in this paper. The operation principles including both steady sate and switching transitions are illustrated. Finally, the simulation and experimental results validates the analysis and shows the feasibility of proposed method.