Concise and Reliable SiC MOSFET Driver Circuits

Abstract:
The high dv/dt of SiC MOSFET switching and the Miller effect can cause gate driver circuit loop ringing. Excessive ringing is the culprit for most SiC MOSFET failure in applications. This article presents a family of 6 and 8-pin SiC MOSFET driver ICs, which integrates the most needed features, including negative bias, desaturation protection and active Miller clamp. The driver ICs require very few external components and are able to drive paralleled MOSFETs with excellent dynamic current sharing. An 11kW compressor drive and a double-pulse board with 4 MOSFETs in parallel were designed to demonstrate the performance of the driver circuit.