Temperature adaptive driving of power semiconductor devices

This work is about the development of a temperature-dependent driving strategy for power transistors, aimed at counterbalancing temperature related increases in their on-state resistance and power losses by a corresponding increase of the amplitude of the applied driving signal. The concept is first demonstrated on the example of a PowerMOSFET, based on semiconductor theory and circuit simulations employing electro-thermal device models; then, experimental results obtained on a first prototype of the novel driving strategy are presented. These well demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed solution as a means of improving performance (i.e., efficiency) and reducing thermal stress (i.e., improving reliability) in the switched operation of silicon power devices.