Three-level driving method for GaN power transistor in synchronous buck converter

Author

Ren, Xiaoyong ; Reusch, David ; Ji, Shu ; Zhang, Zhiliang ; Mu, Mingkai ; Lee, Fred C.

Author_Institution

Jiangsu Key Lab. of New Energy Generation & Power Conversion, Nanjing Univ. of Aeronaut. & Astronaut., Nanjing, China

fYear

2012

fDate

15-20 Sept. 2012

Firstpage

2949

Lastpage

2953

Abstract

The emerging Gallium-Nitride (GaN) based power transistors offers the potential to achieve higher efficiency and higher switching frequencies than possible with Silicon MOSFET´s. This paper will discuss the GaN device characteristics, and based on this, the driving method will be discussed. Then a three-level driving method is proposed to overcome the high reverse conduction loss issue of the GaN power transistor. Finally, a 12V to 1.2V Synchronous Buck converter with a full load current of 20A is built to verify the proposed method. The experimental results show that the proposed method is necessary and effective for efficiency improvement in high switching applications of GaN power transistor.

Keywords

MOSFET; gallium compounds; power convertors; GaN; current 20 A; gallium-nitride based power transistors; high reverse conduction loss; load current; silicon MOSFET; switching frequencies; synchronous buck converter; three-level driving method; voltage 12 V to 1.2 V; Gallium nitride; Logic gates; MOSFET circuits; Power transistors; Silicon; Switching frequency; Transistors; Driving method; Gallium Nitride (GaN); Three-level;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE), 2012 IEEE

Conference_Location

Raleigh, NC

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0802-1

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-4673-0801-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ECCE.2012.6342521

Filename

6342521