A Wireless Power Transfer based Gate Driver Design for Medium Voltage SiC MOSFETs

Wide band gap (WBG) devices have been widely adopted in numerous industrial applications. In medium voltage applications, multi-level converters are necessary to reduce the voltage stress on power devices, which increases the system control complexity and reduces power density and reliability. High voltage silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET enables the medium voltage applications with less voltage level, simple control strategy and high power density. Nevertheless, great challenges have been posed on the gate driver design for high voltage SiC MOSFET. Wireless power transfer (WPT) can achieve power conversion with large airgap, which can satisfy the system isolation requirement. Thus, in this article, a WPT based gate driver is designed for the medium voltage SiC MOSFET. The coil is optimized by considering voltage isolation, coupling capacitance, size, and efficiency. Experimental prototype was built and tested to validate the effectiveness of the proposed WPT based gate driver.