A High Voltage Multi-Purpose On-the-fly Reconfigurable Half-Bridge Gate Driver for GaN HEMTs in 0.18-μm HV SOI CMOS Technology

• Published in: 2020 18th IEEE International New Circuits and Systems Conference (NEWCAS) pp. 178 - 181
• Main Authors: Ly, Nam, Aimaier, Nueraimaiti, Alameh, Abdul Hafiz, Blaquiere, Yves, Cowan, Glenn, Constantin, Nicolas G.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2020
• Subjects: dead-time; Delays; driving strength modulation; Gallium nitride; GaN; gate driver; Gate drivers; Integrated circuits; on-the-fly configuration; Pulse width modulation; SOI; Switches; Transistors
• DOI: 10.1109/NEWCAS49341.2020.9159781

Intended to be the core design of a configurable and flexible high voltage power system for aerospace applications, the gate driver in this work is capable of driving a wide range of GaN devices of different sizes, in half-bridge configuration, with configurable driving strength and dead-time. These features eliminate the need for discrete gate resistors and allow for higher density designs, such as SiP integration. The on-the-fly reconfigurability enables local efficiency optimization and EMI reduction, which is essential in safety-critical applications. The proposed IC was fabricated using XFAB's 0.18 \mu \mathrm{m} HV SOI CMOS process (xt018). Measurement results show that the chip can drive targeted GaN HEMTs from smallest to largest size at the desired turn-on and turn-off speeds, as fast as 1.46/1.18 ns of rise/fall-time. The measured dead-time is from 4.5 ns to 58 ns with an input voltage up to 86 V. The parameters can be reconfigured on-the-fly at a pulse width modulation frequency up to 20 MHz.