In recent years, there is a clear trend toward increasing the demand for electric power in high-power applications. High-power converters are making major impacts on these high-power applications. Recent breakthroughs in Silicon Carbide (SiC) materials and fabrication techniques have led to the development of high-voltage, high-frequency power devices, which are at the heart of high-power converters. SiC metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) have advantages over silicon (Si) devices due to their higher breakdown voltage, higher thermal capability, and lower on-state resistance.
However, their fast switching frequency and high blocking voltage bring challenges to the gate-drive circuit design. The gate driver of SiC-MOSFETs requires a power supply that provides a high-voltage, high-density design, a low input-output capacitance (CI/O) transformer design, good voltage regulation, as well as good resilience to faults to enable safe and fast operation.
In this thesis, a power supply that supplies multiple gate drivers for 10 kV SiC MOSFETs is presented. A transformer design approach with a single turn at the primary side is proposed. A 20 kV insulation is achieved by the primary HV cable insulation across a toroid transformer core. The CI/O is designed less than 2 pF to mitigate the Common-Mode (CM) noise. A circuit topology analysis is performed and the inductor/capacitor/capacitor/inductor (LCCL) – inductor/capacitor (LC) circuit is selected. This circuit allows Zero-Voltage Switching (ZVS) at full operation range. A Resonant-Current-Bus (RCB) is built at the transformer primary side to achieve load-independence. / Master of Science / Wide-bandgap semiconductor devices have attracted widespread attention due to their superior performance compared to their silicon devices counterpart. To utilize its full benefits, this thesis presents a complete design and optimization of a gate-drive power supply that supplies multiple gate drivers for high-voltage, high-speed semiconductor devices. Four objectives, including high density at high voltage, good noise mitigation, fair voltage regulation, resilience to faults have been achieved.
During the design procedure, different topology candidates are introduced and compared, after which a resonant topology is selected. The wide-bandgap semiconductor devices are utilized to reduce the size and losses. Hardware assembly is shown and experimental testing results are provided in the end to verify the design.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/85050 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Hu, Jiewen |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Burgos, Rolando, Boroyevich, Dushan, Southward, Steve C. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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