Product Summary

When using Power Modules (IGBT/SiC) in high-power inverters and power supplies (solar, wind, energy storage, industrial drives, railways, EV chargers, etc.), the gate driver area is often surprisingly time-consuming. There are many tasks to be done, such as isolation, gate voltage generation, protection circuits, evaluation, and certification, which tend to become a bottleneck from prototyping to mass production. This is where Power Integrations' Plug & Play gate driver comes in. It's a "ready-to-use" solution that can be driven simply by attaching it to a Power Module, significantly reducing development time.

Three types of gate driver products

Power Integrations offers three main types of gate drivers.

• SCALE-iDriver: Isolated gate driver IC (chip)
• Driver Core: A sub-board equipped with a gate driver IC and an isolated DC-DC converter (gate resistors and active clamps are not yet implemented).
• Plug & Play: A complete circuit board with gate resistors already implemented, ready to be directly connected to a power module.

In particular, Power Integrations is focusing on its third type of product: Plug & Play. By inputting a PWM ON/OFF signal, the Power Module can be directly turned ON/OFF. Installation methods include screw mounting, soldering, and PressFIT.

The basic concept of a Plug & Play gate driver

The Plug & Play gate driver has the following features:

• Compatible with 600V to 6500V class power modules.
- Built-in insulated gate drive and gate voltage generation
Optimized design including gate resistors
• Equipped with protection functions such as short-circuit protection, overvoltage protection, and UVLO.

For IGBTs, a standard gate voltage of +15V / -10V is provided. On the other hand, since the recommended gate voltage for SiC MOSFETs varies depending on the manufacturer, semi-customization is possible for each power module.

Key Feature ①: Advanced Active Clamp (AAC) suppresses turn-off surges.

In high-current power modules, the di/dt during turn-off can easily cause Vce surges due to parasitic inductance, and the common practice is to increase the gate resistance to slow down switching. Power Integrations' AAC (Advanced Active Clamp) partially turns on the gate during turn-off to suppress surges and clamp overvoltages. As a result, there is less need to slow down switching excessively to avoid surges, which also leads to reduced switching losses.

Source: From the 2SP0230T2x0 SCALE-2 Family datasheet.​

Key Feature ②: Fast and complete short-circuit protection (death detection)

During a short circuit, the collector current rises sharply. Plug & Play reads the collector voltage after a certain time (tRES) has elapsed since the gate was turned on, and if it is higher than the set threshold (Vce(sat)), it determines that a short circuit has occurred and forcibly turns off the gate. Because the process is completed within the board without returning to the microcontroller, the response is fast, and in the waveform example, the current converges in the order of microseconds.

Source: Gate-Driver with Full Protection for SiC-MOSFET Modules

Plug & Play Product Lineup Quick Reference Guide

We offer gate driver boards compatible with Power Modules. Some products also support parallel use and 3-level inverter configurations.

Related Information

• Gate driver products in general

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