Resonant driving scheme for p-doped gallium nitride high electron mobility transistor to reduce driving power loss

Abstract

In high-frequency power electronics applications, gallium nitride high electron mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs) can switch at frequencies of several megahertz. In this case, the driving loss of transistors becomes one of the important reasons that affect the entire conversion efficiency of the system. p-doped GaN (p-GaN) as a new GaN HEMT structure has achieved commercial success in recent years, but due to its special structure, traditional resonant driving schemes designed for Si-MOSFETs have poor applicability to p-GaN HEMTs. Therefore, according to the structure characteristics and the driving requirements of p-GaN HEMTs, an improved resonant driving scheme is proposed. In the proposed driving scheme, the gate charge energy is recycled to the resonant capacitor when the p-GaN HEMT is turned off, and released when it is turned on, thus reducing the driving power loss. The working principle of the driving circuit and the design method of component parameters are given in this paper. The experimental results show that for high-frequency applications with switching frequencies exceeding several megahertz, the power loss of the proposed resonant driving scheme is significantly lower than that of non-resonant driving scheme, which verifies the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed scheme.