Evaluation of insulated gate bipolar transistor protection with ZnO thick films varistors

Author

Debeda, Helene ; Azzopardi, Stephane ; Lucat, Claude ; Martin-Stempin, M.P. ; Tardy, P.

Author_Institution

ENSEIRB, Univ. Bordeaux 1, Talence, France

Volume

3

Issue

1

fYear

2010

fDate

1/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

10

Abstract

To have efficient protection of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) against various electrical voltage overshoots, screen-printed zinc oxide (ZnO) varistors have been developed using a planar structure. These varistors exhibit a breakdown voltage higher than 600 V and a non-linear coefficient up to 40. Some samples have been tested in real operations conditions to protect 1200 V IGBT in the case of unclamped inductive switching operations (default on the freewheeling diode). The results have shown the high efficiency of the designed varistors by clamping the voltage overshoot appearing on the IGBT. Optimising of the fabrication process (mechanical pressure or not on ZnO layers, ZnO thickness, electrode and substrate nature), lead to dissipated energy density of 105 J/cm³.

Keywords

insulated gate bipolar transistors; overvoltage protection; power field effect transistors; thick film resistors; varistors; zinc compounds; IGBT protection; ZnO; electrical voltage overshoots; freewheeling diode; inductive switching operations; insulated gate bipolar transistor protection; zinc oxide thick films varistors;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Power Electronics, IET

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1755-4535

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/iet-pel.2008.0097

Filename

5357034