Reduction of Switching Losses and Current Ringing Effects in SiC JFET-Si MOSFET Cascode Switch using an Enhanced Gate Driver

SiC based power switches are used to improve the performance of PV converters at high operating frequency, voltage and temperature. In this paper SiC JFET-Si MOSFET cascode configuration is used as a power switch. To fully utilize the excellent characteristics of SiC JFET, a low voltage Si MOSFET and a high voltage SiC JFET cascode configuration is used. Enhanced two stage dc coupled gate driver circuit is proposed to drive the SiC-Si cascode switch. It reduces switching losses and system volume. In addition to that parasitic dampening methods are used to reduce current ringing effects. SiC-Si cascode configuration with proposed gate driver circuit provides high efficiency and high power density.