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A Converter Based Switching Loss Measurement Method for WBG Device

Year: 2023 | Author: Qiuzhe Yang | Paper: H1.3
Proposed method topology
Fig. 1. Topology of the proposed method.
  Although the opposition method has previously been proposed and used for switching loss measurements, prior works lack a thorough consideration of wide-bandgap (WBG) devices. First, with the increase in frequency, the printed circuit board (PCB) trace AC resistance cannot be ignored, and should instead be measured as a unity with the inductor AC resistance. Secondly, although soft switching is commonly utilized in turn-off loss measurement, the loss from soft-switching current in the PCB and inductor hasn't been explicitly elaborated on in previous works, even though soft switching takes up a considerable portion of one switching cycle. To address these issues, this work proposes a converter-based method for measuring and calculating the switching loss, then validates this approach using gallium-nitride (GaN) devices. The topology of the proposed method is a synchronous rectifier (SR) buck converter with two identical devices as a half-bridge configuration, as shown in Fig.1. The proposed method can measure both the turn-off and turn-on losses of GaN devices. Since the most important and challenging step is to determine accurate turn-off loss, and the turn-on loss can be extracted based on the turn-off loss, this study emphasizes the presentation of an accurate turn-off loss measurement method. First, the operation principle and loss breakdown of the converter-based method are introduced. Then, the measurement setup and considerations are illustrated for an Infineon GaN device. Finally, the measurement result is presented, as obtained with the proposed method.
Switching cycle waveform
Fig. 2. In one switching cycle: (a) operation waveform, and (b) conduction loss breakdown.

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