Presentation Description: Integrated advanced protection and safety feature in gate drivers is the trend in the growing market to provide an efficient and reliable high power system with high power density, especially in hybrid-electric vehicles/electric vehicles (HEV/EV) traction inverters. Companies and system designers are working towards reducing their solution size and cost by integrating discrete features into fewer chips to optimize the solution size and cost. Gate drivers evolved from providing needed drive strength to integrating protection features. This paper will explore the protection features for reliable gate drive, involving monitoring the gate voltage and gate drive strength. Safety feature of monitoring IGBT/SiC modules’ gate threshold voltage to extend the lifespan of traction inverters is presented. The safe state input control for active short circuit techniques ensuring system reliability in the event of a failure is discussed.
