
8
Handling Precautions for IGBTs
Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors are susceptible to gate-
insulation damage by the electrostatic discharge of energy
through the devices. When handling these devices, care
should be exercised to assure that the static charge built in
the handler’s body capacitance is not discharged through
the device. With proper handling and application procedures,
however, IGBTs are currently being extensively used in pro-
duction by numerous equipment manufacturers in military,
industrial and consumer applications, with virtually no dam-
age problems due to electrostatic discharge. IGBTs can be
handled safely if the following basic precautions are taken:
1. Prior to assembly into a circuit, all leads should be kept
shorted together either by the use of metal shorting
springs or by the insertion into conductive material such
as “ECCOSORBD
LD26” or equivalent.
2. Whendevicesareremovedbyhandfromtheircarriers,the
hand being used should be grounded by any suitable
means - for example, with a metallic wristband.
3. Tips of soldering irons should be grounded.
4. Devices should never be inserted into or removed from cir-
cuits with power on.
5.
Gate Voltage Rating
- Never exceed the gate-voltage rat-
ing of V
GEM
. Exceeding the rated V
GE
can result in per-
manent damage to the oxide layer in the gate region.
6.
Gate Termination
- The gates of these devices are essen-
tially capacitors. Circuits that leave the gate open-circuited
or floating should be avoided. These conditions can result
in turn-on of the device due to voltage buildup on the input
capacitor due to leakage currents or pickup.
7.
Gate Protection
- These devices do not have an internal
monolithic zener diode from gate to emitter. If gate protec-
tion is required an external zener is recommended.
ECCOSORBD
is a Trademark of Emerson and Cumming, Inc.
Operating Frequency Information
Operating
(Figure 13) is presented as a guide for estimating device
performance for a specific application. Other typical fre-
quency vs collector current (I
CE
) plots are possible using the
information shown for a typical unit in Figures 4, 7, 8, 11 and
12. The operating frequency plot (Figure 13) of a typical
device shows f
MAX1
or f
MAX2
whichever is smaller at each
point. The information is based on measurements of a
typical device and is bounded by the maximum rated junc-
tion temperature.
frequency
information
for
a
typical
device
f
MAX1
is defined by f
MAX1
= 0.05/(t
d(OFF)I
+ t
d(ON)I
). Dead-
time (the denominator) has been arbitrarily held to 10% of
the on- state time for a 50% duty factor. Other definitions are
possible. t
d(OFF)I
and t
d(ON)I
are defined in Figure 21.
Device turn-off delay can establish an additional frequency
limiting condition for an application other than T
JMAX
.
t
d(OFF)I
is important when controlling output ripple under a
lightly loaded condition.
f
MAX2
is defined by f
MAX2
= (P
D
- P
C
)/(E
OFF
+ E
ON
). The
allowable dissipation (P
D
) is defined by P
D
= (T
JMAX
-
T
C
)/R
θ
JC
. The sum of device switching and conduction losses
must not exceed P
D
. A 50% duty factor was used (Figure 13)
and the conduction losses (P
C
) are approximated by P
C
=
(V
CE
x I
CE
)/2.
E
ON
and E
OFF
are defined in the switching waveforms
shown in Figure 21. E
ON
is the integral of the instantaneous
power loss (I
CE
x V
CE
) during turn-on and E
OFF
is the inte-
gral of the instantaneous power loss (I
CE
x V
CE
) during turn-
off. All tail losses are included in the calculation for E
OFF
; i.e.
the collector current equals zero (I
CE
= 0).