Reverse-voltage-blocking (RB) and bidirectional (BD) power switches using wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor materials enable new power converter designs. Due to the dominance of voltage-source inverters (VSIs) using switches that are only required to block forward voltage, limited research has been devoted to the development of RB and BD switches using either monolithic or discrete devices. In this paper, detailed characterization results for three prototype hybrid RB/BD switches that have been built using discrete silicon-carbide (SiC) devices are presented. The dynamic voltage sharing, switching speed, voltage overshoot, and switching loss of these hybrid RB/BD switches are compared. The important commutation issues associated with the implementation of hybrid RB/BD switches in current-source inverters (CSIs) and matrix converters (MCs) are discussed. For the MC, gate signal shifting control applied to hybrid BD switches with dual gate drives is presented to achieve reliable commutation. For the CSI, a novel H8-CSI topology is proposed to achieve reliable commutation using hybrid BD switches that only require a single gate drive.
