News

Firecomms Collaborating with Egrtech to Develop Highly Efficient SiC Gate Drivers

April 30, 2019 by Paul Shepard

Firecomms announced its collaboration with Egrtech in the development of highly efficient silicon carbide gate drivers using robust and reliable optical communication solutions.

Firecomms RedLink® transceivers and Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) provide galvanic isolation on the data control lines of Egrtech's EGDR-90 SiC gate driver board. This half bridge 1200V 100kHz solution can work with dc bus voltages up to 1kV and is compliant to a 5kVrms isolation test voltage.

Moreover, its direct mount low-inductance design has, for parallel connections, excellent current sharing performance and is ideal for use in applications such as solar power converters, EV and HEV as well as variable speed motor drives.

Furthermore, a high dV/dt immunity is achieved by the integration of a plug-on POF module using Firecomms RedLink® 5 Mbd dual voltage transceivers. The vertical RedLink® solution combined with a Firecomms' cable assembly using high-grade POF has been tested and certified for use in industrial applications and the severe environmental conditions in which many of these drives operate.

"The increased power density of SiC gate drivers result in significantly higher EMI compared to traditional IGBT solutions. To overcome this challenge, the POF link provides an added level of immunity for the drive controller," says Emre Uzun, Director at Egrtech.

Dr John Lambkin, Firecomms' European Managing Director and Chief Technical Officer adds, "We always walk the extra mile to support our customers. Our POF solutions can be customized for link length and connector type. Firecomms provides diverse custom alternatives including vertical, horizontal, and tilted transceiver options to better fulfil our customers' requirements."