Tutorial Overview

The Pairing Gate Drive to EliteSiC Tutorial provides a comprehensive guide for selecting and implementing gate drivers with SiC MOSFETs in high-power applications. It covers key megatrend applications such as solar inverters, EV chargers, BLDC motors, and switched-mode power supplies, emphasizing the importance of pairing gate drivers correctly to optimize efficiency, reduce conduction and switching losses, and maintain safety. The tutorial explains how gate voltage swings, negative bias, and driver timing impact losses during turn-on and turn-off, and details how to calculate gate drive currents using first-order approximations for proper MOSFET operation.

The tutorial also highlights different SiC switch types, their voltage and current requirements, and how to avoid unwanted effects like runt pulses at high switching frequencies or low duty cycles. It explores critical concepts such as the Miller plateau, total gate charge (QG), input capacitance (CISS), and the trade-offs between RDSON and switching losses.

Finally, the tutorial presents recommended onsemi gate driver families for single- and dual-channel configurations, with details on voltage swings, source/sink currents, and support for advanced features like internal/external negative bias, Active Miller Clamp, and desaturation protection. Application block diagrams illustrate real-world examples ranging from 3 kW power supplies to 25 kW EV chargers.