High Temperature Operation of Digital Gate Driver Integrated into a Power Module

This paper reports the experimental verification of high-temperature operation of a DGD-integrated power module, an area previously unexplored. Digital gate drivers (DGDs) have emerged as a promising technology to enhance the switching performance of power transistors, such as IGBTs and MOSFETs, compared to conventional gate drive circuits. DGDs provide significant improvements in energy efficiency and effectively mitigate voltage and current overshoots during turn-on and turnoff periods. In this study, a power module was fabricated with a 6-bit DGD, in which the DGD was mounted close to the IGBT to minimize gate voltage surge. The high-temperature operation was then evaluated to assess the influence of heat generation in the IGBT chip. Integrating the DGD reduced the gate voltage spike by approximately 97% while maintaining stable operation at ambient temperatures up to 130 °C. Despite the close proximity of the DGD and IGBT chips, heat transfer from the IGBT to the DGD was found to be negligible. With proper driver output stabilization and optimized thermal design, DGD-integrated power modules can achieve high-temperature performance comparable to that of conventional power modules.