| Abstract |
The majority carrier semiconductor devices such as GTO thyristor, bipolar transistor and so forth are controlled by the current or charge. Therefore, when turning-on or turning-off GTO thyristor quickly, a sufficient amount of charge should be supplied to or removed from the gate of GTO thyristor instantaneously; that is, GTO thyristor should be triggered by the positive or negative high gate current of sharp pulse form to make turn-on time or turn-off time shorter. This paper presents a new gate drive circuit for high power GTO thyristors, in which the energy-storage reactor and the FET switch with fast switched characteristics are employed to make the high gate current of sharp pulse form. First, the proposed gate drive circuit is analyzed and its usefulness is confirmed by experiments. Next, the performance characteristics of this new gate drive circuit is compared with those of the conventional one. As a result, it is clarified that new gate drive circuit is superior to the conventional one in the performance of the gate-driving characteristics, power consumption, size and weight. |
