Development of a low cost and reliable power MOSFET gate driver for bridge configuration

Power MOSFETs are used as a switching device in half or full bridge dc-ac converter circuits. In such application, MOSFETs require a gate drive circuit to translate the on/off signals from an analog or digital controller into the power signals necessary to control the MOSFET. To design gate drive circuits, the study of the device (MOSFET) circuit models and the turn-on and turn-off characteristics of the MOSFET are required. The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a systematic approach to design gate drive circuits suitable for such applications. A low cost and reliable MOSFET gate driver is developed for bridge configuration.