Development of a High-Temperature Gate Drive and Protection Circuit Using Discrete Components

This paper presents a high-temperature (HT) gate drive and protection circuit for Silicon-Carbide (SiC) power MOSFETs entirely built from commercial off-the-shelf HT discrete components. To estimate cost reduction, a brief comparison was made between the proposed circuit and a commercial circuit using silicon-on-insulator integrated circuits. To evaluate performance, power tests were conducted up to 180 degrees C in a thermal chamber. Eventually, the proposed circuit achieved a 90% cost reduction, and all functions were validated by experiments at 180 degrees C. This demonstrated that the proposed circuit is a cost-effective solution for contemporary HT applications.