Friday, February 27, 2009

Challenges firing an IGBT

So it turns out firing an IGBT is a little more complicated than I thought. It turns out the gate acts like a capacitor, so if you charge it with a positive voltage to turn on the transistor, it stays on unless you put a negative charge on it to turn it off.

I've found an integrated circuit from fairchild semiconductor, the FOD3180, which does this as well as using an opto isolator. I've ordered a few from Arrow electronics as I couldn't find a local supplier.

more to follow

No comments: