Abstract:
Integrated gate commutated thyristor (IGCT) is a power stack that integrates a gate commutated thyristor (GCT) with its gate driver circuit through PCB. The switching control of the GCT must be achieved by relying on an integrated gate driver circuit, and the parasitic impedance in the circuit can seriously affect the switching characteristics of the GCT. Therefore, taking a class of high-voltage and high-current IGCT driver circuit boards that need to be solved urgently as the research object, we analyze the traditional layout of the driver circuit, and propose a comprehensive optimization strategy considering the gate driver unit and layout. The driver unit is constructed by using a hybrid capacitor bank to connect in parallel with electrolytic capacitors and ceramic capacitors, and the capacitor bank and MOSFET switch group with an equally spaced circular layout are designed to limit the parasitic impedance to a very low level. Finally, the traditional and proposed IGCT driver boards are designed, respectively, and the experimental results show that the proposed solutions can effectively improve the performance of the IGCT driver board.