Surge current capability of power diodes is one of the essential parameters that needs to be considered for high power density operations in power electronic applications. Gallium Nitride (GaN) is emerging as the next generation of power semiconductor devices due to its superior material characteristics. This work presents the device working principle, characteristics, and the surge capability of 1200V GaN polarisation superjunction (PSJ) hybrid diodes. The experimental results show that the GaN PSJ diode can withstand a surge current of 60A which is around 8 times its rated current and a surge energy of 5.4J. Additionally, despite having a merged PiN and Schottky structure, no bipolar current flow due to the activation of p-doped GaN can be observed until breakdown. This can also be confirmed through the device forward characteristic which shows a unique saturation behaviour at about 76A without any bipolar region.
Here, an ultra‐fast protection scheme that is dedicated to depletion‐mode (d‐mode) devices is proposed. The key to the d‐mode device gate drive design is the negative supply and overcurrent protection, due to the safety concern for d‐mode devices when a failure happens in power conversion applications. This work evaluates specific requirement of d‐mode devices, such as the isolated negative power supply and short‐circuit protection. Normally‐on d‐mode GaN devices have lower on‐resistance and minimal dead time in comparison with enhancement‐mode (e‐mode) GaN devices, which can further reduce the switching loss and conduction loss. Both simulation and experimental verification are conducted in this work to evaluate the performance of the proposed protection scheme. The proposed desaturation scheme can wipe out the overcurrent event within 341 ns. Furthermore, the proposed negative power supply scheme can sustain its output for 60.5 ms, providing sufficient action time for the control unit to isolate the converter.
Due to an error in the production process, an incorrect version of Fig. 5, which did not include blue shading, was published. The correct version of Fig. 5 is shown below. Fig. 5. (Color online) (a) Typical reverse recovery waveform and (b) test circuit for reverse recovery measurement.
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