The influence of IGBT switching mechanism on the dead-time of inverters.

To investigate the influential factors of power devices on the dead-time of inverters, the effects of voltage, current, and temperature on the switching time of the insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) were analyzed based on the semiconductor theory and the formula of dead-time. The regularity of the three factors with the IGBT switching time was given and therefore the dead-time was obtained. Experiment results using two-level half-bridge inverter unit shows that the dead-time increases approximately linearly with the voltage ascending and the temperature ascending, but decreases with the current ascending, following the composed rule of exponential and hyperbola. In addition, the occurrence of bridge shoot through is in accordance with the calculation of dead-time, which proves the accuracy of the theoretical analysis. Finally, the obtained conclusion can be important references for the accurate setup of dead-time and the optimization of dead-time compensation algorithm in electrical power converters in practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]