Catastrophic failure and fault-tolerant design of IGBT power electronic converters - An overview

Rui Wu, Frede Blaabjerg, Huai Wang, Marco Liserre, Francesco Iannuzzo

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

    212 Scopus citations

    Abstract

    Reliability is one of the key issues for the application of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) in power electronic converters. Many efforts have been devoted to the reduction of IGBT wear out failure induced by accumulated degradation and catastrophic failure triggered by single-event overstress. The wear out failure under field operation could be mitigated by scheduled maintenances based on lifetime prediction and condition monitoring. However, the catastrophic failure is difficult to be predicted and thus may lead to serious consequence of power electronic converters. To obtain a better understanding of catastrophic failure of IGBTs, the state-of-the-art research on their failure behaviors and failure mechanisms is presented in this paper. Moreover, various fault-tolerant design methods, to prevent converter level malfunctions in the event of IGBT failure, are also reviewed.

    Original languageBritish English
    Title of host publicationProceedings, IECON 2013 - 39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society
    Pages507-513
    Number of pages7
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2013
    Event39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2013 - Vienna, Austria
    Duration: 10 Nov 201314 Nov 2013

    Publication series

    NameIECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference)

    Conference

    Conference39th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2013
    Country/TerritoryAustria
    CityVienna
    Period10/11/1314/11/13

    Keywords

    • catastrophic failure
    • fault torlerant circuit
    • Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor
    • power electronics

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