A Novel I_C Measurement Without Blanking Time for Short-Circuit Protection of High-Power IPM

Abstract

Intelligent power module (IPM) short-circuit protection is a key factor in improving the reliability of power electronics systems. The conventional short-circuit detection method based on monitoring the collector-emitter voltage (V CE) desaturation has a blanking time and is slow to respond to any type of shortcircuits. Furthermore, the di C /dt method cannot be used in the IPM due to the absence of Kelvin emitter. A slow short-circuit protection process can have an irrecoverable and destructive impact on the reliability of the IPM. In this paper, a new high-power IPM topology with an internally integrated shunt is designed to realize real-time current detection, which can achieve fast short-circuit detection without any blanking time. A prototype 1700 V/150 A IPM is manufactured, and a corresponding fast short-circuit protection circuit is designed. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the integrated shunt method as its performance is significantly better than that of the V CE desaturation method. The proposed IPM needs 380 ns and 1.4 µs to detect short-circuits of types I and II, respectively. The short-circuit withstand times for short-circuits of types I and II are 2.06 µs and 0.62 µs, respectively. In addition, the short-circuit energy losses for shortcircuits of types I and II are reduced by 66% and 64.3%, respectively, compared to the V CE desaturation method. The proposed method can also be used as a reference for other IPM designs.

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