Week 01

Power Semiconductor Devices

I organize a study path from switching devices to converters and inverters while tracking power flow and device stress together.

Power Electronics course visual
Course visual for this study sequence.

What I connect in this unit

A power diode passively fixes the current direction, while MOSFETs and IGBTs interrupt or establish current through gate commands. Separating MOSFET resistive conduction from IGBT saturation voltage and then tracing the voltage-current overlap during turn-on and turn-off connects device choice directly to loss analysis.

Concept map

  1. Power diodes
  2. MOSFETs
  3. IGBTs
  4. Switching trajectories

Technical anchor

One switching event can be framed as E_sw = integral(v_D(t) i_D(t) dt); a wider trajectory in the v-i plane means more overlap energy during the transition.

How I review it

Check rated voltage and RMS current together with gate-drive voltage, dv/dt, di/dt, and reverse-recovery current on the same switching interval to expose each device constraint.

Connection to the full course

Unit 1 of 12. Unit numbers follow circuit dependencies and do not claim the original lecture schedule.

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