Naturally soft-switched high-frequency gate drive circuit for power MOSFETs/IGBTs

An isolated soft-switched gate drive using a coreless PCB transformer is described. The switching frequency of the gate drive electronics is set at 8 MHz and the diameter of the coreless PCB transformer is merely 0.46cm. Because of the high frequency operation involved, the gate drive electronics has to be soft-switched in order to achieve high energy efficiency and reduce the gate drive power consumption. With the use of a modulation technique, the gate drive circuit can operate a power MOSFET and a power IGBT over a wide frequency range from 0.1Hz to at least 500kHz. The power consumption of the gate drive is kept below 1W throughout the switching frequency range.link_to_subscribed_fulltex