Evolution of Thyristors
- PDF / 1,200,413 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 86 Downloads / 168 Views
REVIEW PAPER
Evolution of Thyristors Krupali Virag Shah1
Received: 4 April 2019 / Accepted: 15 August 2020 The Institution of Engineers (India) 2020
Abstract In today’s world, most household electrical equipments are using power electronics circuits. Most common appliances are television set, computers, and battery chargers. One of the components in all this circuit is thyristor, a solid-state semiconductor device with four layers of alternating N- and P-type materials. This paper gives a brief review of this important member of power electronics circuits, ‘‘The Thyristor.’’ The history of thyristor, application and drawbacks of various thyristors and future of thyristors are broadly discussed. Keywords Power semiconductor devices Future of thyristors Application of thyristors
Introduction Power electronics in modern era began with the invention of power semiconductor devices. Power electronics is the application of solid-state electronics to the control and conversion of electric power. It is considered as one of the biggest revolutions in electrical engineering. Power electronics has the ability to convert electric energy from one form to another in competent, condensed and robust manner depending upon its appropriate necessity. It is a vast area in electronics and electrical engineering, and still research is going on. Design and control of electronic systems are the main area where it is implemented. Power electronics systems are usually designed with the key
elements characteristics and limitations of active power devices [1]. Earlier, the following power electronic devices were used [2]: 1. The mercury-arc valve—the first high power electronic device which was invented by Peter Cooper Hewitt in 1902 [3–5]. 2. The high-vacuum and gas-filled diode thermionic rectifiers. 3. Triggered devices such as the thyratron (electron tube: gas filled, that uses a filament or a heater) and ignitron. As time passes by, there is an improvement in voltage and current handling capacity of solid-state devices. Mercury-arc rectifiers and thyratrons, which were used in gridcontrolled circuits, became obsolete, and they are replaced by solid-state devices. Power semiconductor devices used in switching mode are the heart of modern power electronics. Few devices are listed in Fig. 1 [1, 4, 6–9]. A large amount of electrical energy is processed in power electronics. More common power electronics device which one can easily found in consumer electronic devices like computers, televisions, laptops, etc., is a rectifier (AC/ DC converter). Semiconductor device switches are used in current systems for the alteration of current/voltage. In Table 1 various types of power device switching conditions are presented [4, 5, 10–13].
Thyristor & Krupali Virag Shah [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Instrumentation and Control Engineering Department, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, India
Thyristor is a four-semiconductor-layer or three-PN-junction device. The term ‘‘Thyristor’’ is resulting from
Data Loading...
