Diodes Inc.'s 40V gate driver reduces IGBT switching losses

PLANO, USA: Diodes Inc., a leading global manufacturer and supplier of high-quality application specific standard products within the broad discrete, logic and analog semiconductor markets, announced the ZXGD3006E6 gate driver. Designed specifically for switching high power IGBTs, this gate driver helps to increase power conversion efficiency in solar inverter, motor drive and power supply applications.

The ZXGD3006E6 typically provides a drive current of 4A for an input current of 1mA, making it a perfect high-gain buffer stage between the high-output impedance of a controller and the low-input impedance of the IGBT. With an emitter-follower configuration, this gate driver is inherently resistant to latch-up and shoot-through issues and delivers propagation delay times of less than 10ns.

The ZXGD3006E6’s wide 40V operating range allows full enhancement of the switching device to minimize on-state losses and permits +20V to -18V gate driving to prevent dV/dt induced false triggering of IGBTs.

To enable circuit designers to better define switching characteristics for particular applications, the gate driver offers separate source and sink outputs, allowing independent control of rise and fall times. Combined with 10A peak current handling, this allows for controlled charge and discharge of large gate capacitive loads, which reduces the risk of EMI issues and cross conduction at higher operating frequencies.

Delivering higher pulse currents than competing devices, this rugged SOT26 packaged gate driver ensures heat dissipation is reduced, resulting in an increase in product reliability. Device pin-out has also been optimized enabling a simplification of PCB layouts and a reduction in parasitic trace inductances.