| Abstract |
The paper presents a gate drive circuit which uses different negative voltage sources for turning off high power GTO-thyristors. This circuit allows to shorten the storage times, to install long gate leads, and to reduce the size of the gate drive unit due to reduced gate trigger power. It can be employed in applications operating at high switching frequencies, i. e. quasiresonant inverters, or in applications involving long distances between GTO and gate drive circuit. The applicability of the circuit and its control method are proved experimentally. The main issue lays on demonstrating the gate turn off power reduction. |
