Electronic – Unexpectedly N-ch MOSFET high drain to source voltage in “on” state

If you want to switch a big current, at a small voltage, it's easy, just whack plenty of volts on the gate to make sure it's fully on (in this case 10V is where it is specified, so 10 or 12V would be a good voltage to pick).

If you want to control a big current, at a small voltage (for example, to get 100A +/- 5% into a small load resistance), you'll want to close a control loop around the MOSFET with an error amplifier. Either a low-value shunt resistor or a hall-sensor could be used to detect the current. That way the amplifier will be responsible for controlling the gate voltage (which will lie somewhere between the threshold voltage and 5 or 10 volts) and will alter the gate voltage to maintain the current as the MOSFET heats. The amplifier should have a supply of perhaps 12V to allow it to drive the gate fully on.

The concept is illustrated here:

Typically \$R_g\$ would be about 100 ohms, R would be perhaps 1K, and C might be 10nF. Rs will determine your transfer function \$I_{out}\$=\$ V_{in}\over R_s\$, and must be rated to not overheat with the maximum possible load current.

A suitable resistance might be something like \$1m\Omega\$ or \$500\mu\Omega\$. Care needs to be taken in the layout at such currents (Rs will need a Kelvin connection).

An approximate calculation for C is 0.2 * Cin, assuming Ro is 100 ohms, Rg is 100 ohms and R is 1K. So the values I show will be stable for loads of up to 50nF at the MOSFET gate. That should be okay for your purposes \$C_{ISS}\$ = 31nF typical (no maximum given), since you state very low voltage, but for a high voltage Miller capacitance will add to the \$C_{ISS}\$ and you might want to increase R a bit if the step response overshoots at all. When the loop is operating properly, the MOSFET gain will reduce the effect of \$C_{ISS}\$, but it's better to have it stable under all conditions.

The loop compensation reduces the frequency response into the audio range-- if you need to drive a huge 200A MOSFET at many kHz, an ordinary op-amp is going to need some help driving the gate.

I would go for 1.5x voltage rating just to be safe, meaning 270-300V. Most of the N Channel FETs I see on Digikey with those specs, and are cheap/plentiful, are already more than enough in terms of current handling capability.

One of your regular looking TO-220 package FETs such as the FDP14N30 from Fairchild Semiconductor, which is a 300V 14A rated N Channel MOSFET, is plenty enough. It will dissipate 7.5 Watts with 300mOhm On resistance and 5 Amps continuous. It can do pulsed currents up to 56 Amps so i'm sure it will handle start-up current surges. Here is the datasheet from the manufacturer

Basically, try to select a component which is rated at MORE than your given parameters, with reasonable and logical room for less than ideal conditions, such as after temperature has increased or if the component happens to be on the low end of tolerance during manufacture.

If you over-rate components too much though it can cost quite a lot more in terms of production cost and PCB space, but if you have a project for university for example, over-rating a component just means your project will fail less during the desperate times you are trying to do final tests and write your reports etc.

If you expect your motor will be turned without powering it, look out for generated voltages that may actually exceed your 300V rated FET. I suggest you get some heavy duty (300-400V) rated diodes to clamp the motor + and - connections to VCC and GND. This is for "Back EMF" protection, and sometimes the diodes are referred to as flyback or freewheeling diodes I believe (this may help you research the topic, and their use). You can also put a big blocking diode parallel over the + and - connection to the motor, which helps with/does the same thing. These are usually used for any type of inductive load.

Also double check the voltage that your N channel low side gate driver uses, the IC I suggested that you use has +-30V gate voltage ratings, so you should be okay - but there ARE components which have much lower (12V, or 20V) gate voltage max ratings.

Because you will be using a proper gate driver IC, I suspect you will not have problems with 10kHz switching, but when not using a gate driver you may have gate capacitance issues causing higher switching loss, as the MOSFET takes more current to discharge/charge than for example a small micrcontroller output pin can provide. The MOSFET would then be in the "linear resistance" region much longer than if a proper gate driver had been used.