Development of a novel 30 kV solid-state switch for damped oscillating voltage testing system

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of a novel semiconductor-based solid-state switch for damped oscillating voltage test system. The proposed switch is configured as two identical series-connected switch stacks, each of which comprising 10 series-connected IGBT function units. Each unit consists of one IGBT, a gate driver, and an auxiliary voltage sharing circuit. A single switch stack can block 20 kV-rated high voltage, and two stacks in series are proven applicable to 30 kV-rated high voltage. The turn-on speed of the switch is approximately 250 ns. A flyback topology-based power supply system with a front-end power factor correction is built for the drive circuit by loosely inductively coupling each unit with a ferrite core to the primary side of a power generator to obtain the advantages of galvanic isolation and compact size. After the simulation, measurement, and estimation of the parasitic effect on the gate driver, a prototype is assembled and tested under different operating regimes. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the developed prototype.