Since MOSFETs have a gate capacitance you’d want to limit the inrush of current from the output of a microcontroller to prevent it from getting damaged prematurely. That’s what gate resistors are usually good for.
Another thing is that most MOSFETs don’t fully activate with a gate voltage below 10V (n type) so usually a microcontroller pin isn’t good enough for switching large loads.
I have a 24V system and have made a voltage divider using two 10k resistors to step down 24V to 12V as gate driving voltage which is pulled down with a weaker MOSFET. The power MOSFET essentially ends up with a 10k gate resistor this way meaning it will take a bit longer to fully saturate.
Is too high harmful? In this situation the load is a heater that activates when the room temperature drops below 18C and deactivates when it gets above 22C so fast switching is not an issue.
You must log in or register to comment.
It really depends how much power/current you are switching. If you are switching 1A with a beefy heatsink FET, the time spent in the linear region is short enough it shouldn’t be a problem. If you are switching 50A though it then you might have a problem. Depending on how that gate divider is set up, you could still potentially damage the gate of the FET when shorting it to ground to discharge it if I understand how its hooked up correctly.
Ideally you would use some kind of FET driver with a voltage source (e.g. linear regulator) to turn on and off the gate plus the gate resistor.
For something that’s not switching at a high frequency, slow rise and fall times are fine as long as you are staying within the safe operating area of your MOSFET. A 10K gate resistor could certainly work, but it will depend on your MOSFET and load.