SiC JFET Gate Driver Design for Use in DC/DC Converters

Even though there is increasing interest in silicon carbide (SiC) JFETs, the fact that they are most commonly normally on devices intimates some designers. Therefore it is important that appropriate gate driver circuits are also introduced to ease the negative concerns associated with a normally on device. By introducing inherently safe gate driver circuits specially designed for the SiC JFET, it will be possible to prove that designing applications using SiC JFETs is not as complicated as some may think. Therefore, this paper provides a follow-up to previous work that introduced an inherently-safe gate driver design for a buck converter. In this paper, another gate driver is introduced that is not only inherently-safe but also provides an isolated solution ideal for a variety of applications. This gate driver is a practical solution for driving both normally-on and enhancement mode SiC JFETs in virtually all power converter topologies