Researched On IGCT Gate Drive Circuit

IGCT (Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor) was developed from GTO and IGBT. It combined with the advantage of GTO and IGBT, which has low turn-on loss, high reliability, turn-off capability, block voltage, frequency and so on. IGCT must marry with the gate drive circuit because of its specific principle. The performance of gate drive circuit influences IGCT characteristics, vice verse.This paper compared the feature of IGCT with GTO and IGBT. It pointed out that IGCT was a new high power device with many superior characteristics. The structure and principle of IGCT were introduced in the paper. At first, the gate drive circuit's designing and principle were explained in detail. IGCT and its designing method of gate drive circuit were testified by IGCT test bench.As a new high power device, IGCT was first developed by ABB, followed by MISTUSISHI. Now the IGCT's market in the world was monopolized by ABB and MISTUSISHI. In public reference there was little about the gate drive circuit. In China, because of no IGCT device, most researching of the gate drive circuit were about the theory simulation and analyzes. There was no product of gate drive circuit in China before.This paper was the first introduction about the detail of homemade schema of integrated gate drive circuit and some experiments about IGCT. Now our group has mass production ability and developed patents. We will make an effort to promote the IGCT assemblies homemad...