Adaptive GaN gate driver with inductive feed-forward for highest efficiency (AGaNDrive)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Anton Grabmaier, since 5/2022; Professor Dr.-Ing. Martin Pfost
• Subject Area: Electronic Semiconductors, Components and Circuits, Integrated Systems, Sensor Technology, Theoretical Electrical Engineering ; Electrical Energy Systems, Power Management, Power Electronics, Electrical Machines and Drives
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462842206

In AGaNDrive we develop and investigate adaptive GaN-HEMT gate driving concepts for very fast switching with low ringing and controlled overshoot. In a power electronic system, this will allow energy-efficient systems with fast switching and thus small and light-weight passive components without sacrificing EMI performance and without imposing additional stress on the GaN-HEMTs. The gate driver will ensure that this is achieved for a wide range of operating conditions and it will adapt itself to different devices. Our gate driver approach will ensure rapid switching with inductive feed-forward and switching with low overshoot and ringing as well as adaption to different operating conditions and devices due to switched sources with controllable voltage and output resistances.The work programme will focus on the development of an active gate driver with an inductive feed-forward network between the output stage of the gate driver IC and the GaN HEMT for fast switching, extended by damping networks to reduce ringing and overshoot. Main objectives of this common project proposal are to find combined active-passive solutions for closed loop gate driving concepts, which compensate amongst others for manufacturing tolerances, ageing and temperature dependency in order to achieve lowest GaN HEMT switching losses while still achieving acceptable EMI performance. Active gate driver feedback concepts will be investigated, enabling active secondary side operation of the inductive feed-forward structure and a switched sources support. Since environmental and load conditions can vary in a wide range, direct feedback strategies might suffer from high complexity and may fail to fulfil all these conditions. For this reason, a configurable transient algorithm-based switched sources driving strength control will be implemented. On one hand, this can be used to adapt for different GaN devices or different load conditions. On the other hand, this will allow to automatically, algorithm-based, adapt to changing operating point conditions. System integration and experimental evaluation will take place for detailed characterization and sample implementation in a typical DC/DC converter application with synchronous rectification.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 2312: Energy Efficient Power Electronics "GaNius"
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Professor Dr.-Ing. Rainer Kokozinski, until 5/2022