Low-Cost SiC MOSFET Driver Circuit with Short-Circuit Protection

Silicon carbide (SiC) power devices are becoming increasingly important in the field of DC microgrids and electric vehicles. Compared with conventional silicon semiconductors, the SiC power devices have many advantages, such as high voltage, high frequency, and high temperature. For DC-DC converters and high-voltage DC transformers, the driving performance of SiC directly affects the operating efficiency of SiC. Due to the low threshold voltage, high voltage variation rate and high driving current of SiC power devices, the driver circuit plays an important role in the use of SiC power devices. Since the SiC power devices have little short-circuit tolerance time, the driver circuit should have the short-circuit protection function. In addition, most of the driver circuits on the market now use integrated chips, which are expensive and highly dependent. Therefore, discrete components are used to reduce the cost of the driver circuit, which contains modulation and demodulation circuit, logic control circuit, power amplification circuit, Miller clamp circuit and short-circuit protection circuit. The driver circuit with short-circuit protection is applied in the buck circuit. Finally, the driver circuit is verified by the simulation results.