Gate turn-off thyristor
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A Gate turn-off thyristor (GTO) is a special type of thyristor, a high-power semiconductor device. GTOs, as opposed to normal thyristors, are fully controllable switches which can be turned on and off by their third lead, the GATE lead.
Normal thyristors (aka silicon controlled rectifiers) are not fully controllable switches (a "fully controllable switch" can be turned on and off at will.) Thyristors can only be turned ON and cannot be turned OFF. Thyristors are switched ON by a gate signal, but even after the gate signal is de-asserted (removed), the thyristor remains in the ON-state until any turn-off condition occurs (which can be the application of a reverse voltage to the terminals, or when the current flowing through (forward current) falls below a certain threshold value known as the holding current.) Thus, a thyristor behaves like a normal semiconductor diode after it is turned on or "fired".
The GTO can be turned-on by a gate signal, and can also be turned-off by a gate signal of negative polarity.
Turn on is accomplished by a positive current pulse between the gate and cathode terminals. As the gate-cathode behaves like PN junction, there will be some relatively small voltage between the terminals.The turn on phenomenon in GTO is however, not as relieable as an SCR(thyristor) and small positive gate current must be mantained even after turn on to improve relieabilty.
Turn off is accomplished by a negative voltage pulse between the gate and cathode terminals. Some of the forward current (about one tenth) is "stolen" and used to induce a cathode-gate voltage which in turn induces the forward current to fall and the GTO will switch off (transitioning to the 'blocking' state.)
GTO thyristors suffer from long switch off times, whereby after the forward current falls, there is a long tail time where residual current continues to flow until all remaining charge from the device is taken away. This restricts the maximum switching frequency to approx 1kHz.It may however be noted that the turn off time of a compareable SCR is ten times that of a GTO.Thus switching frequency of GTO is much better than SCR.
| Charecterstic | Description | Thyristor(1600 V,350 A) | GTO(1600 V,350 A) |
|---|---|---|---|
| VT ON | On state voltage drop | 1.5 V | 3.4 V |
| ton,Igon | Turn on time,Gate current | 2 micro secs,200 mA | 8 micro secs,2 A |
| toff | Turn off time | 15 micro secs | 150 micro secs |
Comparison of a SCR and GTO of same rating.
The main applications are in drives and traction.
