A Review of the Experimental Performance of Turn-Off Methods in Wide Bandgap Semiconductors

Abstract

Wide Bandgap devices are becoming more popular because of their higher switching performance. However, this higher performance comes at the cost of increased susceptibility to parasitic effects and leads to problems such as voltage overshoot and ringing of the switching node. Many strategies have been described in the literature that suppress these undesirable effects and enable faster switching. Generally, the literature describes the effectiveness of a new suppression method by experimentally comparing the outcomes when the strategy is used versus when it is not used. However there is no study that compares experimental results of the many different reported strategies with each other. This work is a meta-analysis of previously reported experimental results of WBG devices that compare the different reported strategies against one another. This shows which class of strategy holds the most promise for future development. The data presented also enables future strategies to be benchmarked against the current state-of-the-art.

Keywords

• Experimental comparison
• fast-switching devices
• oscillation suppression methods
• wide bandgap (WBG) devices