A look at IGBT and silicon-carbide gate drivers from Tamura

Tamura is almost a hundred-year-old company and a broad magnetics manufacturer of current sensors, transformers, gate drivers, and dc-to-dc power modules. They have UL-approved drivers to go with IGBT or silicon-carbide power modules. They are introducing a new generation of gate drivers, which have much better performance than what was available before. The new units are much smaller — half the size of the originals, and Tamura says it is working on reference designs with all module manufacturers to get their gate drivers approved for use with mdoules for mass production.

In a short video we recently shot, Tamura’s Craig Simpson reviewed the current generation of gate drivers. Tamura can add a PCB to create what’s called a module unit, which can be matched to a particular manufacturer’s module. The next generation will have separate DC-to-DC converters to run either silicon-carbide or IGBT modules, as well as the new gate driver family, which is half the size of the original gate driver, and which will include some proprietary properties.