Resonant IGCT Soft-Switching: Zero-Voltage Switching or Zero-Current Switching?

In the last thirty years, integrated gate-commutated thyristor (IGCT) has been employed in medium voltage $\,\mathrm{M}\mathrm{W}$ power level converters and demonstrated some of lowest conduction losses any actively controlled device traditional hard-switched, sub- notation="LaTeX">$\,\mathrm{k}\mathrm{Hz}$ applications. Extending use to frequency applications, such as dc transformers is possible through soft-switched operation, where low turn- off current zero-voltage xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">on significantly reduce switching losses. For this purpose, article explores tradeoffs transition between zero-current conditions reverse conducting IGCTs. Switching resulting minimal loss are identified for standard commercial devices engineering samples subjected increased electron irradiation energy at expense on-state voltage. The operation IGCTs record 5 notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm{k}$ notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm{Hz}$ thermally validated under load conditions.