Prospect of soft switching power converter technologies

This paper reports a detailed study of hard and soft-switching performance of high power unipolar and bipolar silicon transistors. Extensive measurements and rigorous two-dimensional (2-D) simulations are used to understand the switching dynamics of power bipolar transistors, power MOSFETs, and insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBT) in zero-voltage and zero-current switching conditions. It is shown that these devices exhibit distinct switching characteristics during turn-off under various switching conditions.