Automated modular high energy evaluation system for experimental thyristor devices

A high energy, modular, completely automated test bed with integrated data acquisition and characterization systems was successfully designed in order to perform both safe operating area as well as very high volume reliability testing on experimental silicon carbide Super Gate Turn Off (SGTO) thyristors. Although the system follows a modular design philosophy, with each functional block acting as a peripheral to a main control module and can be adapted to arbitrary power and pulse width levels, for the specific SGTO devices initially evaluated it was configured to have the device discharge variable current levels of up to 6 kA into a 0.5 Ω resistive load with a relatively square pulse fixed at 100 μs full width at half maximum delivering energy levels up to 1.8 kJ to the load.