Fabian Stamer, Andreas Liske, Norbert Stadter, Marc Hiller

IECON 2020 The 46th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society

This paper analyzes how a previously presentedadaptive open loop gate driver handles fault currents. Whencontrolling insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs), it isessential to ensure safe operation in the whole operating range.Most important, the gate driver must be able to safely turn OFFa unacceptably high current like a short-circuit current. Such afault generates a current of unknown magnitude, which has tobe switched off as safe and slow as possible. A special shutdownmode of the investigated open loop gate driver is presented in thispaper, which makes it possible to safely shut down a fault currentwithout knowing the actual operating point of the IGBT. Basedon measurement results it is shown that all currents, includingdesaturation of the IGBT can be safely turned OFF.