An active control gate drive circuit for IGBTs to realize low-noise and snubberless system

This paper describes a novel gate drive circuit for IGBTs to realize low-noise and snubberless system. This gate drive circuit controls the gate voltage to suppress the collector current variation ratio di/dt, which causes the reduction of surge voltage and voltage variation ratio dv/dt at the switching operation. The turn on di/dt and turn off di/dt are detected by the secondary winding of a saturation type reactor inserted into the counter-arm and the wiring inductance voltage at the emitter terminal, respectively. The experimental results and simulation results indicate that the surge voltage and dv/dt can be reduced without increasing the switching loss, allowing snubberless, low noise operation of IGBTs.