Voltage-source gate drive having shunt capacitors and shunt resistors

Abstract

Disclosed is a device that decouples switching speed and gate delay time using an improved voltage-source gate driver. A shunt capacitor and a shunt resistor are connected in series to parallel across gate resistors of a voltage-source gate driver. The shunt capacitor and shunt resistor allow the gate delay and switching speed effect of the gate resistors to be decoupled. The shunt capacitor provides an initial high charge voltage and discharge gate current to reduce gate delay time. The shunt resistor modifies the effective gate resistance, which affects the gate current and the resulting switching speed. Shunt capacitor and shunt resistor values are determined to achieve the desired switching speed control with minimum gate delay time. When multiple power devices are paralleled, a common gate resistor, a shunt resistor and a capacitor combination is used. Each power device is also provided a respective split-gate resistor.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.