Title: An effective IGBT driver circuit for three level neutral point clamped converters

Authors: Hany A. Hamed; Fatima N. Al Mansoori; Ehab H.E. Bayoumi

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Automation Engineering, Emirates Steel, Abu Dhabi, 9022, UAE ' Department of Electrical and Automation Engineering, Emirates Steel, Abu Dhabi, 9022, UAE ' Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Technology, Abu Dhabi Men's College (ADMC), Higher Colleges of Technology, Abu Dhabi 25035, UAE

Abstract: This paper presents a low-cost IGBT driver circuit for a three-level neutral point clamped (3L-NPC) converters. The driver circuit is built with IR2110 with an external dead-time circuit based on Schmitt trigger. Originally, the IR2110 is designed to drive two switches of a half-bridge inverter in a complementary manner. Two IR2110 are used to drive one phase of the 3L-NPC converter. Each pulse leading edge is delayed for around ten microseconds to prevent the shoot-through phenomenon. The circuit manipulates the pulses generated from the digital controller is introduced in details. The low and high voltage side of the driver circuit are optically isolated. The proposed circuit design is experimentally tested its applicability for driving 3L-NPC converters is verified.

Keywords: IGBT driver circuit; shoot-through; three-level NPC converters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIED.2018.090409

International Journal of Industrial Electronics and Drives, 2018 Vol.4 No.1, pp.25 - 32

Received: 14 Aug 2017
Accepted: 28 Aug 2017
Published online: 15 Mar 2018 *