Highly Integrated Gate Drivers for Si and GaN Power Transistors

This book explores integrated gate drivers with emphasis on new gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors, which offer fast switching along with minimum switching losses. It serves as a comprehensive, all-in-one source for gate driver IC design, written in handbook style with systematic guidelines. The authors cover the full range from fundamentals to implementation details including topics like power stages, various kinds of gate drivers (resonant, non-resonant, current-source, voltage-source), gate drive schemes, driver supply, gate loop, gate driver power efficiency and comparison silicon versus GaN transistors. Solutions are presented on the system and circuit level for highly integrated gate drivers. Coverage includes miniaturization by higher integration of subfunctions onto the IC (buffer capacitors), as well as more efficient switching by a multi-level approach, which also improves robustness in case of extremely fast switching transitions. The discussion also includes a concept for robust operation in the highly relevant case that the gate driver is placed in distance to the power transistor. All results are widely applicable to achieve highly compact, energy efficient, and cost-effective power electronics solutions.​

Achim Seidel was born in Stuttgart, Germany, 1986. He received his B.Eng. degree in mechatronics/electrical engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Esslingen, Esslingen, Germany, in 2010. In 2012, he received the M.Sc. degree from Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Germany. Between 2012 and 2019, Achim Seidel was working as a research assistant at the Robert Bosch Center for Power Electronics at Reutlingen University, Reutlingen, Germany. He received the Ph.D. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, in 2020. Since 2019, he is a hardware developer for ebike chargers at the Robert Bosch GmbH in Reutlingen, Germany.

Bernhard Wicht has 20+ years of experience in analog and power management IC design. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering from University of Technology Dresden, Germany, in 1996 and the Ph.D. degree (Summa Cum Laude) from University of Technology Munich, Germany, in 2002. Between 2003 and 2010, he was with Texas Instruments, Freising, responsible for the design of automotive power management ICs. In September 2010, he became a full professor for integrated circuit design and a member of the Robert Bosch Center for Power Electronics at Reutlingen University, Germany. Since April 2017, he has been heading the Chair for Mixed-Signal IC Design at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany. His research interest includes IC design with focus on power management, gate drivers and high-voltage ICs. Dr. Wicht was co-recipient of the 2015 ESSCIRC Best Paper Award and of the 2019 First Prize Paper Award of the IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics. In 2018, he received the faculty award for excellent teaching at his university. He invented seventeen patents with several more pending. He is currently a member of the Technical Program Committee of ISSCC and he is also a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society.