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ABSTRACT
This article describes the electrical characteristics of the main power semiconductor devices, in relation to their drivers. The possible effects of the driving circuits on power semiconductor devices are highlighted, covering the drivers’ impacts on conduction and switching transient performances. Three types of power devices are described: thyristors and triacs, bipolar junction transistors (BJT) and gate turn-off thyristors (GTO), and gate-controlled field effect transistors (MOSFET, IGBT and HEMT). The article also presents the specific drive features of currently available wide bandgap power devices, such as SiC BJT, SiC MOSFET and GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors.
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Read the articleAUTHORS
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Stéphane LEFEBVRE: Professor - SATIE, Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France
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Bernard MULTON: Professor - SATIE, École Normale Supérieure de Rennes, Rennes, France
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Nicolas ROUGER: Research Manager - Laplace, CNRS, Toulouse, France
INTRODUCTION
In this article, we study the specific features of power semiconductor components, already presented in
thyristors and triacs, which today operate almost exclusively in converters where blocking is assisted by the mains (rectifiers, dimmers) or by the load (resonant systems);
bipolar transistors (BJT) and GTO and GCT thyristors, whose characteristics are very similar;
gate transistors (notably MOSFETs, IGBTs and HEMTs) whose capacitive input gives them a very specific behavior.
For each of these components, we will also specify the specific properties of emerging components using large-gap materials (SiC and GaN), in particular SiC BJTs and MOSFETs and GaN HEMTs.
For each of these categories of power semiconductor components, the control circuits are described in detail in articles
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KEYWORDS
thyristor | gate transistors | GTO | MOSFET SiC | HEMT GaN
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Control characteristics of power semiconductor components
Control characteristics of thyristors and triacs
Bibliography
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