Nonlinear capacitors in snubber circuits for GTO thyristors

Abstract

Many applications with GTO thyristors require snubber circuits, at least for, turn-off. In achieving high switching frequencies there are conflicting design criteria for the snubber capacitor-losses versus timing conditions. Improvements to this situation are expected by employing nonlinear capacitors. Features of snubber circuits with nonlinear capacitors are described, and experimental results obtained from 50 A and 90 A GTO thyristors are discussed.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>