An Overview of Advanced Gate Driver Concepts for SiC Semiconductors

Silicon carbide (SiC) power transistors have been steadily gaining popularity in power electronics applications as they have improved properties over silicon based devices, namely silicon MOSFETs and IGBTs. However, because of very high switching speed which results in lower losses, in general application their use is often a concern because of electromagnetic interference (EMI). In order to fully utilise the potential of SiC based devices, a careful design of power stage, commutation loop and gate drive is needed. Because of this reason, this paper presents a review of existing gate drive methods for performance improvement of SiC devices. A special emphasis is given to the gate drive concepts, as it is an important element for the further advancement of SiC-based converters. With improved switching, specifically active gate driving techniques a compromise between EMI and switching losses can be achieved.