COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING ROORKEE

Established in 1998

Lecture 7: Turn on Methods of SCR

Dr. Aadesh Kumar Arya
Associate Professor & Head
 Turn on Methods of SCR
Triggering
The turning on Process of the SCR is known as Triggering. In other words, turning the SCR from Forward-
Blocking state to Forward-Conduction state is known as Triggering. The various methods of SCR triggering
are discussed here.
 Forward Voltage Triggering
 Gate Triggering
 dv/dt Triggering
 Temperature or Thermal Triggering
 Light Triggering

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 Forward Voltage Triggering
In forward voltage triggering method, the SCR is forward biased i.e., anode is more positive than cathode but this
voltage is increased significantly. The gate terminal is kept open.
As the voltage increases, junction J2‘s depletion layer width increases, which in turn increases the accelerating-voltage

of minority carriers at this junction. At a particular voltage, there will be an Avalanche Breakdown at the inner junction J 2 as a
result of minority charge carriers colliding with atoms and releasing even more minority charge carriers.
This voltage is known as Forward Breakover Voltage VBO. At this voltage, the junction

J2 becomes forward biased and the SCR turns into conduction state. A large current flows through
the SCR (from Anode to Cathode, which is limited by the load resistance) with a very low
voltage drop across it.
During the turn ON state, the forward voltage drop across the SCR is in the range of 1 to 1.5 volts and this
may be increased with the load current

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In practice this method is not employed because it needs a very large anode to cathode voltage. And also once
the voltage is more than the VBO, the SCR turns on and a very high current flows through it instantly, which
may cause damage to the SCR. Therefore, most of the cases this type of triggering is avoided.

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 Temperature Triggering
This type of triggering is also known as Thermal Triggering as the SCR is turned by heating it.
The reverse leakage current depends on the temperature. If the temperature is increased to a certain value, the number of
hole-pairs also increases.
This causes to increase the leakage current and further it increases the current gains of the SCR. This starts the regenerative
action inside the SCR since the (α1 + α2) value approaches to unity (as the current gains increases).
By increasing the temperature at junction J 2, the width of the depletion layer decreases. So, when the forward bias voltage is

near to VBO, we can turn ON the SCR by increasing the junction temperature (J 2). At a particular temperature, the reverse bias
of the junction breaks down an the device starts to conduct.
This triggering occur in some circumstances particularly when it the device temperature is more (also called false triggering).
This type of triggering is practically not employed because it causes the thermal runaway and hence the device or SCR may
be damaged.

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 Triggering
 
In forward blocking state i.e., anode is more positive than cathode, the junctions J 1 and J3 are forward biased and the junction

J2 is reverse biased.

So, the junction J2 behaves as a capacitor (J1 and J3 as conducting plates with a dielectric J2) due to the space charges in the
depletion region.
The charging
  current of the capacitor is given as:

Using Product Rule of Differentiation, we get

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As the junction Capacitance is always almost constant, we can ignore the rate of change of junction Capacitance
dCj / dt. So, the final Charging Current is:

where,  is the Charging Current

is the Junction Capacitance
Q is the charge
is the voltage applied across the device
is the rate of change of junction Capacitance
is the rate of change of applied voltage
From the above equation, if the rate of change of the applied voltage is large (i.e., it is applied suddenly), then the flow of
charging current will increase, which causes the SCR to turn on without any gate voltage.
It is clear that we can turn SCR just by increasing the rate of change of voltage across the device rather than applying a large
forward bias voltage (as we did in the previous case). However, this method is also practically avoided because it can cause a
false turn ON process and this can produce very high voltage spikes across the SCR so there will be considerable damage to it.

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 Light Triggering
An SCR turned ON by light radiation is also called as Light Activated SCR (LASCR).
Hence, Light Triggering is also known as Radiation Triggering. Generally, this type of triggering is employed in phase-
controlled converters in HVDC transmission systems

In this method, light rays with appropriate wavelength and intensity are allowed to strike
the junction J2.
The bombarded energy particles from the light (neutrons or photons) causes to break
electron bonds as a result, new electron – hole pairs are formed in the device.
As the number of charge carriers are increased, there is an instantaneous increase in the
flow of current, causing the SCR to turn ON.
NOTE: For successfully turning ON the SCR with the help of light radiation, the rate of
change of applied voltage (dv / dt) must be high.
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 Gate Triggering
This is most common and most efficient method to turn ON the
SCR. When the SCR is forward biased, a sufficient positive
voltage at the gate terminal injects some electrons into the
junction J2.
This results in an increase in the reverse leakage current and
hence the breakdown of junction J2 occurs even at a voltage
Depending on the size of the SCR, the gate current varies from
lower than the VBO.
a few milli-amps to 250 milli-amps or more.
If the gate current applied is more, then more electrons are
injected into the junction J2 and results to come into the
conduction state at much lower applied voltage.

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In gate triggering method,
a positive voltage applied between the gate and the cathode terminals. We can use three types of gate signals to turn
On the SCR. Those are DC signal, AC signal and pulse signal.

DC Gate Triggering
In this triggering, a sufficient DC voltage is applied between the gate and cathode terminals in such a way that the gate is
made positive with respect to the cathode. The gate current drives the SCR into conduction mode.
In this method, a continuous gate signal (DC Voltage) is applied at the gate and hence it causes internal power dissipation
(or more power loss). Another important drawback is there is no isolation between the power and control circuits (as they
both are DC).

AC Triggering:
This is the most commonly used method of turning on the SCR, especially in AC
applications. With proper isolation between the power and control circuits (using
transformers), the SCR is triggered by the phase-shift AC voltage derived from the main
supply. The firing angle is controlled by changing the phase angle of the gate signal.
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However, only one half of the cycle is available for the gate drive to control the firing angle and for the next half of
the cycle, a reverse voltage is applied between the gate and cathode.

This is one of the limitation of AC triggering and the other is need for separate step down or pulse transformer to
supply the voltage to gate drive from the main supply.

Pulse Triggering
The most popular method of triggering the SCR is the pulse
triggering. In this method, gate is supplied with single pulse or a
train of high frequency pulses.
The main advantage of this method is that gate drive is
discontinuous or doesn’t need continuous pulses to turn the
SCR and hence gate losses are reduced in greater amount by
applying single or periodically appearing pulses. For isolating
the gate drive from the main supply, a pulse transformer is used.
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