| There has been an increasing research interest in silicon carbide (SiC) for power electronics applications. SiC has emerged as the most likely candidate to bring about the next breakthrough in terms of power density and high efficiency in power electronics. One of the factors contributing to the expected increase in power density is the ability of SiC to reliably operate at higher temperatures than current silicon (Si) based power electronics can.;However, high temperature operation of a SiC power system requires a special set of supporting technologies. One of these technologies is high temperature control electronics. High temperature silicon on insulator (HTSOI) electronics have demonstrated high temperature operation in excess of 250°C and several digital control blocks are commercially available. This manuscript describes the design, building, and testing of a 225°C HTSOI based gate driver for SiC power JFET. Some key characteristics of the design presented include: 5 V logic compatible input, generation of negative voltage from a 5 VDC input (removing the burden of creating an external negative voltage), high frequency switching capability, wide temperature range of operation (25°C-225°C). The design presented fills the gap between existing 5V SOI digital logic and the new SiC JFET technology. |
