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174 Power semiconductor devices and converter hardware issues
Fig. 5.15 An inverter leg with the improved dissipative snubber circuit.
Fig. 5.16 A non-dissipative snubber circuit for high power GTO inverter.
in trying to recover the high energy associated with the operation of the snubber
circuit (Holtz et al., 1988; 1989).
5.9 Current trends in power semiconductor technology
In recent years, reports have shown that improvements in the performance of the
semiconductors can be achieved by replacing silicon with the following:
. silicon carbide (SiC)
. semiconducting diamond
. gallium arsenide.
The first group of devices is the most promising technology (Palmour et al., 1997).
