The Recovered Charge Characteristics of High Power Thyristors

The recovery characteristics of high power thyristors and diodes becomes increasingly important to the circuit designer as devices are made larger and faster. This paper considers various types of recovery as well as some important circuit influences on the recovery characteristics of power devices. Low and high frequency device data are presented for a number of different circuit conditions. The effects of spreading velocity, peak current during conduction, conduction pulsewidth, and commutating di/dt are considered. A new method for recovered charge data presentation is shown and some practical test circuit design considerations are discussed.