Thyristor
Comparisons to other devices

Although thyristors are heavily used in megawatt-scale rectification of AC to DC, in low- and medium-power (from few tens of watts to few tens of kilowatts) applications they have virtually been replaced by other devices with superior switching characteristics like power MOSFETs or IGBTs. One major problem associated with SCRs is that they are not fully controllable switches. The GTO thyristor and IGCT are two devices related to the thyristor that address this problem. In high-frequency applications, thyristors are poor candidates due to long switching times arising from bipolar conduction. MOSFETs, on the other hand, have much faster switching capability because of their unipolar conduction (only majority carriers carry the current).
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