Study of RC-snubber for series IGCTs

A new power semiconductor device, integrated gate commutated thyristor (IGCT), is used in three-level high power and medium voltage inverters. It is claimed that the turn-off snubbers for IGCTs are not necessary. However, for series connected IGCTs, a simple snubber is usually needed. In this paper, the behavior of the RC-snubber is analyzed and the simulations are done. The effects based on the different parameters of the snubber are compared and discussed. Simulation results show that good performance can be achieved when RC-snubber is adopted.

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