
Infineon Technologies Bipolar GmbH has extended its family of bipolar semiconductors with an optically-triggered thyristor that improves reliability and lowers system cost of ultra-high-power applications.
Infineon’s new 6-inch thyristor incorporates reliable optical triggering, eliminating the requirement for an external electrical trigger circuit. In addition, on-board safety features such as overvoltage protection, dv/dt protection and protection against forward voltage transients during recovery time further reduce component count and design complexity.
Thyristors are the technology of choice for controlling ultra-high currents and voltages because they deliver better performance than IGBT-based voltage source converters (VSCs) in terms of on-state losses and symmetric blocking capability. The introduction of a highly integrated light-triggered thyristor that, for the first time, integrates FRP (forward recovery protection) help minimize design overheads, improve reliability and drive down bill of material (BoM) costs.