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I am designing a 84 W battery charger half-bridge converter from an AC source of 220 - 240 VAC. I am using an SG3525A for the design. From a simulation I did in LTspice, there are some oscillations at the primary side switching node (where both MOSFETs are connected together) at the time when both transistors should be OFF. The oscillations are there even if I add a dead-time resistor. I have attached the image of the schematic of the circuit I am using below:

enter image description here

The drain-to-source voltage waveforms of the highside MOSFET (green) and lowside MOSFET (blue):

enter image description here

I have placed an RC snubber circuit (200 pF capacitor and 9.5 kΩ resistor across the primary transformer winding) but the oscillations are only slightly damped. If I increase the capacitor and reduce the resistor, the oscillations are damped further, but at the expense of higher power dissipation in the resistor.

  1. How do I efficiently damp these oscillations without affecting efficiency too much? (The leakage inductance of the primary side with the secondary windings shorted is 20 μH. The primary inductance is 11.26 mH and the secondary inductance is 470 μH).

  2. Can these oscillations cause shoot through in the MOSFETs?

The drain current waveforms of the highside MOSFET (green) and lowside (blue):

enter image description here

From my calculations, the peak current of the primary side switch should be about 1.1 A.

  1. The high-side MOSFET's gate drive voltage also shows some spikes when in the low state and this spikes reach up to 4.5 V. How can I damp these spikes? Since they can lead to false turn-on of the MOSFET.

The gate to source voltage of the highside MOSFET is:

enter image description here

  1. Also, the gate drive voltage has been reduced from 12 V to slightly less than 10 V. I assume it's because the turn off spike goes to below ground. Kindly explain to me how I can avoid the ringing and prevent the voltage from being clamped?

The gate voltage is in blue, the source voltage is in red and the gate to source voltage is in green:

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

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    \$\begingroup\$ As Andy has noted - It's what Vgs does that matters - Vs relative to ground or anywhere else can do "strange things", but as long as Vg follows, so that Vgs stays at zero, the FET stays off. If you DO have Vgs ringing then a reverse Schottky diode mounted physically and electrically close to g and s will clamp negative ringing cycles and damp ringing. \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon
    Feb 7 at 11:45
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Russell McMahon I have placed a schottky diode but still the ringing is there \$\endgroup\$
    – p_karis
    Feb 7 at 12:38
  • \$\begingroup\$ As Andy and others mention - what matters is g-s ringing and not eg s ringing with g tracking s. If you add a g-s Schottky diode that is tightly coupled to the FET you "cannot" (for most values of cannot) get negative gates signals relative to drain that are higher than the schottky conduction voltage. Depending on diode used this may be in the 0.3 - 0.5V range. Your above green graph shows negative gate excursions of -1 to -5 V in many cases. Is the simulator REALLY suggesting that these voltages are appearing across a forward conducting Schottky diode? \$\endgroup\$
    – Russell McMahon
    Feb 8 at 9:45

2 Answers 2

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How do I efficiently damp this oscillations without affecting efficiency too much?

You don't need to do anything. When both MOSFETs are off, the residual energy left in the primary oscillates due to leakage inductance and MOSFET drain-source capacitance. It won't hurt anything.

Can this oscillations cause shoot through in the MOSFETs?

No, it can't.

The highside MOSFET's gate drive voltage also shows some spikes when in the low state and this spikes reach up to 4.5 V. How can I damp this spikes?

The source is wobbling up and down and, therefore you want the gate to wobble up and down at the same amplitude and phase. This guarantees that the actual gate-source voltage is OFF and stable (which is what you want).

Kindly explain to me how I can avoid the ringing and prevent the voltage from being clamped?

It doesn't need any fixing --> just look at the gate-source voltage differentially to convince yourself about this.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ what do you mean by this? "The source is wobbling up and down and, therefore you want the gate to wobble up and down at the same amplitude and phase. This guarantees that the actual gate-source voltage is OFF and stable (which is what you want)." \$\endgroup\$
    – p_karis
    Feb 7 at 11:00
  • \$\begingroup\$ @p_karis - the source is wobbling up and down due to the ringing (1) --> you want the gate to follow that wobble or else you will have spurious activations of the MOSFET (2) --> In this "off period" you want \$V_{GS}\$ to be zero i.e. what \$V_G\$ is with respect to ground is immaterial. \$\endgroup\$
    – Andy aka
    Feb 7 at 11:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Andy aka the mosfet datasheet is aosmd.com/res/data_sheets/AOD280A60.pdf \$\endgroup\$
    – p_karis
    Feb 8 at 11:11
  • \$\begingroup\$ Comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on Electrical Engineering Meta, or in Electrical Engineering Chat. Comments continuing discussion may be removed. \$\endgroup\$
    – Null
    Feb 8 at 14:10
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Sure the ringing is not a real disaster. What I have done is lapped up the ringing by ballparking the dead time to be half a ring period .Practical ring half periods are usually less than 1 microsecond with barefoot powermosfets.I nipped it up on the scope in the last century. You could nowdays use the simulater.You should get a nice clean DS voltage waveform and cool temperatures.Clean wave implies fewer EMC issues down the track.If you need to control operating point which is usually the case controlling the on time will suffice .

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  • \$\begingroup\$ How do you lap up the ringing by ballparking the deadtime to be half the ring period? \$\endgroup\$
    – p_karis
    Feb 8 at 11:18
  • \$\begingroup\$ @p.karis .How ???? well this is a noncommercial site so I did not state the details . \$\endgroup\$
    – Autistic
    Feb 8 at 20:53

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