Investigating the Shielding Effect of Pulse Transformer Operation in Isolated Gate Drivers for SiC MOSFETs

Abstract

Wide-bandgap technology evolution compels the advancement of efficient pulse-width gate-driver devices. Integrated enhanced gate-driver planar transformers are a source of electromagnetic disturbances due to inter-winding capacitances, which serve as a route to common-mode (CM) currents. This paper will simulate, via ANSYS Q3D Extractor, the unforeseen parasitic effects of a pulse planar transformer integrated in a SiC MOSFET gate-driver card. Moreover, the pulse transformer will be ameliorated by adding distinctive shielding layers aiming to suppress CM noise effects and endure high dv/dt occurrences intending to validate experimental tests. The correlation between stray capacitance and dv/dt immunity results after shielding insertion will be reported.

Keywords

• wide-bandgap
• gate-driver
• planar transformer
• CM noise
• ANSYS Q3D Extractor
• SiC MOSFET