IEEE Best Oral Presentation Award for Michael Basler

The Fraunhofer IAF engineer was honored for the presentation of his paper “Monolithically Integrated Two-Stage GaN Gate Drivers”, on which he worked together with his colleagues Dr. Richard Reiner, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Stefan Mönch, Daniel Grieshaber, Fouad Benkhelifa and Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Quay. In the paper, Basler presents a two-stage gate driver based on the compound power semiconductor gallium nitride (GaN) and its integration into GaN power ICs. The two-stage approach increases the flexibility of the device and makes it possible to realize different driver topologies.

Two-stage gate driver for GaN HEMTs

The two-stage driver was on-wafer characterized and finally optimized according to goals of energy consumption, switching time and delay time. Using simulation, the driver was combined with various power transistors in an IC. For one supply voltage with a bootstrap capacitor, the GaN power IC achieved an energy consumption of 10.3 mW; for two supply voltages and a switching frequency of 500 kHz, a duty-cycle of 50 % and a load capacitor of 100 pF, it achieved 23.0 mW energy consumption.

Integrated peripherals for more efficient power electronics

In power electronics, system peripherals such as drivers, sensors or protection circuits are increasingly being integrated on transistor chips. In particular, the integration of gate drivers in high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) is a preferred solution for making power electronics more compact and enabling faster and cleaner switching. This reduces the complexity of higher-level power electronic systems while increasing their efficiency.