The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 23, 2015
Filed:
Mar. 14, 2013
Advanced Energy Industries, Inc., Fort Collins, CO (US);
Christopher C. Mason, San Jose, CA (US);
Advanced Energy Industries, Inc., Fort Collins, CO (US);
Abstract
In accordance with this invention the above and other problems are solved by a switching apparatus and method that uses a switching circuit having a pair of parallel solid-state diodes (e.g., PN or PIN diodes), one of which is connected to a transistor (e.g., power MOSFET or IGBT), to switch a capacitor (or reactance element) in or out of a variable capacitance element (or variable reactance element) of an impedance matching network. Charging a body capacitance of the transistor reverse biases one of the two diodes so as to isolate the transistor from the RF signal enabling a low-cost high capacitance transistor to be used. Multiple such switching circuits and capacitors (or reactance elements) are connected in parallel to provide variable impedance for the purpose of impedance matching.