A Novel Auxiliary Resonant Snubber Inverter Using Wide Bandgap Devices

A novel auxiliary resonant snubber is introduced. The design and operation are carried out, in which this snubber circuitry enables main Gallium Nitride (GaN) switches operating under zero voltage switching (ZVS) condition, and auxiliary Silicon Carbide (SiC) diodes switching under zero current switching (ZCS) condition. Besides, the auxiliary snubber circuitry gating algorithm is also optimized which allows reducing the switching and conduction loss in auxiliary GaN switches to obtain higher system efficiency and better thermal performance. This proposed inverter can be applied to wide range of potential applications, such as string solar inverter, renewable energy combined distributed generation, dc-ac part of bi-directional electrical vehicle (EV) on-board charger, and uninterruptible power supply (UPS), etc.