Loss Model for Gallium Nitride DC-DC Buck Converter
This work was supported primarily by the Engineering Research Center Program of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy under NSF Award Number EEC- 1041877 and the CURENT Industry Partnership Program.
Loss modeling for enhancement mode gallium nitride field efect transistor in power converter applications
Wide bandgap devices have been drawn significant research interests for future renewable energy applications thanks to the advantages of high switching performance, high achievable junction temperature, and low on-resistance in comparison with silicon-based devices. It becomes more and more important to understand the switching characteristics for designing high-efficient power converters. A model for estimating switching power losses in enhancement mode gallium nitride (eGaN) Field effect transistor (FET) is developed and presented in this paper. The loss modeling considers both the on resistance and parasitic capacitances that arise from inherent manufacturing processes. A 12V/24V boost converter is prototyped by using eGaN FET and used to validate the proposed model by comparing the experimental result with simulation. The switching losses are calculated for different frequencies and compared with experimental result and show a strong correlation with the expectation in simulations. It shows that the loss model inaccuracy is less than 10%.
Performance evaluation of silicon and gallium nitride power FETs for DC/DC power converter applications
Detailed performance evaluation of silicon and GaN power FETs is presented for chip-scale DC/DC converter applications. It is shown that improved GaN power FETs and silicon MOS power diodes can potentially lead to nearly 90% power conversion efficiency when switched at 5 MHz in a synchronous buck converter topology.