Soft Switching Behavior of IGCT for Resonant Conversion

Application of the Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor as a switching element in the medium voltage series resonant converter for DC-DC conversion offers the opportunity for increased conversion efficiency and higher switching frequency of the converter. Low current turn-off, already discussed in the previous works, shows promising results for increasing operating frequency of the converter, thus enabling the use of physically smaller components in the design, decreasing the total volume and weight of the solution. This paper presents the results of the switch characterization under single resonant current pulse operation, providing further insight into the turn-off process, relevant timing intervals and resulting losses, supported by TCAD simulations and experimental results.