On the High-Speed Turn-Off of a Power Transistor by a Small Saturable Core

An effective method for reducing the size and weight of the switching dc-dc converter is to increase the switching frequency. To accomplish this with no deterioration in efficiency, it is necessary to suppress the switching loss per cycle by shortening the switching time. An efficient dc-dc converter operating at the megahertz region is presented. The turn-off time is shortened by using the current feedback and the core saturation. The turn-off mechanism is analyzed with the equivalent circuits. As a result, it is found that the excess carrier in the base region is discharged quickly by the large reverse base current, which flows when the energy stored in the base-emitter capacitance of the power transistor is transferred to the saturated inductance of the core with high frequency oscillation.