Developmental MOS controlled thyristors (MCT) behavior

Although the MCT is still at an early stage of development and at the preproduction stage, experiments indicate that it has potential for pulse power and power conditioning applications. In these experiments, epitaxial substrate devices with a range of rated blocking voltages from 500 V to 1000 V and peak controllable currents from 30 A to 60 A were studied. Many of these devices were operated at up to 80% of the rated blocking voltages. The devices have turn-on times (10-90%) of about 0.5 μs and turn-off times (10-90%)⩽1.5 μs at the peak controllable current. Forward voltage drops are less than 1.5 V. Single MCTs have been operated at peak powers of 24 kW, average powers of 2 kW, and repetition rates up to 50 kHz at a 50% duty. Operation of series arrays of five devices have been demonstrated at 2000 V at 80% of the rated blocking voltage per device