Application Technology Research Of IGCTs

The Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor IGCT is a new power electronic device. It is integrated with the GCT chip and the gate driver by low inductance. It has advantages both in stable turn-off capability of transistor and low turn-on loss of SCR. It has characteristics of high current, high voltage, high switching frequency, high reliability, compact conformation and low loss. It costs low, and is high-yield, so it has a wild application in future. Therefore, it is necessary to do some research for IGCTs, and to design a device to do experiments for IGCTs in high-voltage and high-current.In this paper, it analyses a single IGCT device.It presents the IGCT's structure, working principles, key technologies, the comparison of IGCT,GTO and IGBT, IGCTs' Characteristic parameters and gate driver circuit principles.Then from a single IGCT device to the entire IGCT unit module, the paper presents the functions of the IGCT unit's clamp protection principle, the stray inductance's influence for device's turn-off over-voltage, and the anti-parallel diode's influence to turn-off over-voltage of the IGCT power unit.Based in detail analysises of the IGCT unit, we designed the IGCT power unit test bench. The test bench is made of the power control counter and device test counter. In designing process, we mainly considered about test security and the diversity of testing capabilities. The paper presents the simulations, circuit principle, functions, of the test bench.Finally we made experiments on test bench and presents numbers of experiment results. The waveforms of results are presented to confirm the rationality and the feasibility of the test bench. Therefore, it lays a foundation for further study of IGCTs.