Short-circuit protection for an IGBT with detecting the gate voltage and gate charge

This paper proposes a new short-circuit protection method for an IGBT. The proposed method is characterized by detecting not only gate charge but also gate voltage of the IGBT. This results in a shorter protection time, compared to the previous method that detects only the gate charge. A real-time monitoring system using an FPGA, A/D converters, and a D/A converter is used for the proposed protection method. Experimental results verify that the proposed method achieves a protection time of 390 ns, which is reduced by 68% compared to the previous method.