International Rectifier, a world leader in power management technology, announced the enhancement of its Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) selection tool that enables design optimization in a wide range of applications including motor drives, uninterruptable power supplies (UPS), solar inverters, and welding. The enhanced IGBT selection tool evaluates application conditions including bus voltage, load current, switching frequency, short-circuit requirements, package and thermal system. New features include customizable thermal constraint setting and Current vs. Frequency output chart that conveniently compare devices over a range of operating conditions. The IGBT selection tool returns a shortlist of products that meet or exceed the application parameters entered by the user. The products are ranked by performance with losses and junction temperature for the specified operating condition to help facilitate the selection process. "IR offers a broad array of IGBT products enabling optimized inverter designs for different applications. The enhanced online selection tool enables engineers compare device performance to select the optimal IGBT for their design even more quickly and easily," said Llewellyn Vaughan-Edmunds, IGBT Product Marketing Manager, IR's Energy Saving Products Business Unit. IGBT selection requires evaluation of many parameters that cannot be simplified into a single metric, as switching losses can be traded for conduction losses. To address this problem, IR's product selection tool generates a Current vs. Frequency graph that provides a powerful indication of the relative performance of different IGBTs. With this information the designer can select the most cost-effective IGBT for the application.
