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US 12,431,889 B2Granted
Fast turn-on protection of a cascode switch
AssigneePower Integrations, Inc.
InventorRajko Duvnjak
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Fast turn-on protection of a cascode switch is presented herein. A cascode circuit includes a depletion mode field effect transistor and an enhancement mode field effect transistor electrically coupled in cascode. During turn-on, a protection circuit detects an overcurrent fault by observing a plateau of a cascode node voltage. An overcurrent fault may be detected in response to the plateau existing for greater than a threshold time duration.
Claims10
A power converter comprising:
- a cascode circuit including a depletion mode field effect transistor and an enhancement mode field effect transistor electrically coupled in cascode, the cascode circuit configured to provide a cascode node voltage;
- and
- an overcurrent detection circuit comprising:
- a comparator configured to compare the cascode node voltage with a threshold voltage;
- and
- a controller configured to define a period that corresponds to when the cascode node voltage gradually decreases, wherein the overcurrent detection circuit is configured to detect an overcurrent fault condition based, at least in part, on a duration of the period defined by the controller.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.