Experimental Evaluation of Dead Time Performance in Single-Phase Inverter MOSFETs and IGBTs Under Varying Loads

In power electronic converters, the dead time of a transistor plays a critical role in determining its overall performance and efficiency. In this paper, experimental tests were conducted on MOSFETs and IGBTs, both of which are important components in power electronics, to assess their dead time performance under varying loads for a single leg of a three-phase inverter application. While controlling the low side of the MOSFET or IGBT is relatively straightforward, optimizing the dead time control for high side voltage can be challenging. To tackle this challenge, a three-phase inverter leg and test bench were set up for both MOSFETs and IGBTs. The gate drive and optocoupler were utilized to enable the controller to receive inverse signals. Subsequently, multiple tests were performed under various conditions to evaluate the performance of the transistors dead time. The experimental results demonstrate the crucial role of load in achieving optimized dead time in various applications. By shedding light on the impact of load on dead time, valuable insights are provided into improving the performance and efficiency of power electronic converters.