High Voltage GaN Driver using EED Architecture

This article proposes a novel driver architecture applied in GaN power transistors, suitable for high-speed and high-voltage half-bridge or full-bridge drivers. The overall circuit design uses only E-mode and D-mode GaN transistors. The driver of the high-side circuit employs the EED structure (E-mode/E-mode/D-mode), and therefore, the gate of the highside transistor can be directly driven by the low-voltage signal without using the traditional level-shifters, simplifying the design. The low-side driver employs the architecture of stacking two E-mode devices to isolate output high-voltage pulses from low-side drive signals to prevent false triggering of the low-side driver. The simulation result shows that the circuit can efficiently drive the half-bridge and LLC converter, generating a high-voltage pulse wave with switching signal amplitude larger than 380Vpp and the desirable operation frequency of faster than 1 MHz. The rise and fall times of the high-voltage pulse waves are 43.2nsec and 43.7nsec, respectively.