SiC JFETs Modular Cascaded Method with Active Clamp Control Strategy for DC Solid-State Circuit Breaker

Power semiconductor devices cascaded topology is one of the most common solutions for solid-state circuit breakers (SSCBs) working in medium-voltage DC systems.However, when the number of cascaded devices is large, current series technologies of power semiconductor devices will be difficult to be applied since with uneven voltage sharing problems.Thus, this paper proposes a novel cascade method of multi-SiC JFETs based on modules cascaded.This method consists of two parts: one is a single-gate driver cascaded SiC JFETs topology which is used to form the module, the other one is an active clamp control strategy which ensures that each module is protected from overvoltage when modules are cascaded.The proposed cascade method can effectively suppress voltage overshoot of cascading power devices in the switching process.Based on the proposed cascade method, a 5kV/63A SSCB prototype is designed.Finally, an experiment is conducted based on the designed SSCB.Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed cascaded method for SSCB.