The performance of a high voltage transistor driver was evaluated under extreme temperatures.  The International Rectifier IR2110 is a high speed power MOSFET and IGBT driver with independent high and low side referenced output channels.  A floating channel is designed for bootstrap operation, and can be used to drive an N-channel power MOSFET or IGBT in the high side configuration with voltages as high as 500 volts. The device is tolerant to negative transient voltages, and is rated for temperature operation between -40 °C and + 125 °C.  Table I shows some of the device manufacturer’s specifications.

The driver was configured in a circuit, as shown in Figure 1, to drive a resistive load using IRFP360 MOSFETs as the low and high side switches.  The driver chip was characterized in terms of its high side gate drive output (HO), low side gate drive output (LO), outputs rise-time, fall-time, and turn-on delay time as a function of temperature between +100 °C and –195 °C using a liquid nitrogen-cooled environmental chamber.  During this evaluation, the driver chip along with the diode and the bootstrap capacitor were subjected to temperature variation; while the biasing resistors and the two switches were kept at room temperature outside the chamber.  Cold-restart capability, i.e. power switched on while the device was at a temperature of -195 °C, was also investigated.  In addition, the effects of thermal cycling under a wide temperature range on the operation of this high speed driver were determined.  The circuit was exposed to a total of 10 cycles between ‑195  °C and +100  °C at a temperature rate of 10 °C/minute.  Following the thermal cycling, circuit measurements were then performed at the test temperatures of +20, ‑195, and +100°C.  A 12V, 1 kHz square wave signal was used to drive the logic inputs of both the high side and low side gate driver outputs.