학술논문

CMOS Active Gate Driver for Closed-Loop dv/dt Control of GaN Transistors
Document Type
Periodical
Source
IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics IEEE Trans. Power Electron. Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on. 35(12):13322-13332 Dec, 2020
Subject
Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Aerospace
Communication, Networking and Broadcast Technologies
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Computing and Processing
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Fields, Waves and Electromagnetics
General Topics for Engineers
Nuclear Engineering
Signal Processing and Analysis
Transportation
Logic gates
Transistors
Gate drivers
Feedback loop
Capacitors
Gallium nitride
Switches
Active gate driver (AGD)
closed-loop systems
driver circuits
++%24v%24<%2Ftex-math>+<%2Finline-formula>+<%2Fnamed-content>%2Fd++%24t%24<%2Ftex-math>+<%2Finline-formula>+<%2Fnamed-content>%22">d $v$ /d $t$
electromagnetic interference (EMI)
electromagnetic interference
feedback circuits
GaN
high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) transistors
power electronics
switching circuits
wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductor
Language
ISSN
0885-8993
1941-0107
Abstract
This article shows both theoretical and experimental analyses of a fully integrated CMOS active gate driver (AGD) developed to control the high d v /d t of GaN transistors for both 48 and 400 V applications. To mitigate negative effects in the high-frequency spectrum emission, an original technique is proposed to reduce the d v /d t with lower switching losses compared to classical solutions. The AGD technique is based on a subnanosecond delay feedback loop, which reduces the gate current only during the d v /d t sequence of the switching transients. Hence, the d v /d t and d i /d t can be actively controlled separately, and the tradeoff between the d v /d t and E ON switching energy is optimized. Since GaN transistors have typical voltage switching times on the order of a few nanoseconds, introducing a feedback loop from the high voltage drain to the gate terminal is quite challenging. In this article, we successfully demonstrate the active gate driving of GaN transistors for both 48 and 400 V applications, with initial open-loop voltage switching times of 3 ns, due to a full CMOS integration. Other methods for d v /d t active control are further discussed. The limits of these methods are explained based on both experimental and simulation results. The AGD showed a clear reduction in the peak d v /d t from –175 to –120 V/ns for the 400 V application.