| Abstract |
The increasing use of renewable resources such as wind and solar energy requires robust powerconverters for feeding energy into the grid. However, conventional power converters, includingcoupled Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristors (IGCTs), are sensitive to temperature changes andvibrations. To decouple the thyristor from the driver, an Integrated Emitter Turn-Off device (IETO)had been presented. Based on this IETO, this current paper introduces a sandwich design of highpowerthyristor devices. The electrical, thermal and mechanical aspects of such devices were firstsimulated and then the optimal design was built and tested. The aforementioned aspects of the newdesign attained the levels of IGCT devices. In conclusion, the newly proposed decoupled sandwichdesign with integrated MOS structure shows enormous potential for feeding fluctuating power into thegrid. In particular, this sandwich design is ideal in terms of parasitic inductance; this means the lowerthe inductance is, the greater the power density of the whole thyristor structure is. |
