Patent 10461736 was granted and assigned to Denso on October, 2019 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A semiconductor device turns on and off a power switching device having a gate terminal and output terminals between which an output current is produced by a gate voltage applied to the gate terminal. The semiconductor device includes: an output current detector detecting a current value correlated with the output current; a voltage detector detecting a voltage across the output terminals of the power switching device; a clamp circuit clamping the gate voltage at a predetermined value; and a controller controlling the clamp circuit to adjust the gate voltage based on the voltage detected by the voltage detector. The controller controls the clamp circuit to set the gate voltage to be at a minimum voltage according to the detected voltage to cause the output current to be larger than a threshold current required for detecting the short circuit in the power switching device.