A 12V 10MHz buck converter with dead time control based on a 125 ps differential delay chain

This paper presents an integrated synchronous buck converter for input voltages >12V with 10MHz switching frequency. The converter comprises a predictive dead time control with frequency compensated sampling of the switching node which does not require body diode forward conduction. A high dead time resolution of 125ps is achieved by a differential delay chain with 8-bit resolution. This way, the efficiency of fast switching DCDC converters can be optimized by eliminating the body diode forward conduction losses, minimizing reverse recovery losses and by achieving zero voltage switching at turn off. The converter was implemented in a 180nm high-voltage BiCMOS technology. The power losses were measured to be reduced by 30% by the proposed dead time control, which results in a 6% efficiency increase at V_OUT = 5V and 0.2 A load. The peak efficiency is 81%.