A Multiresonant Gate Driver for High-Frequency Resonant Converters

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a high-frequency/very high frequency (VHF) multiresonant gate drive circuit. The design procedure outlined here is greatly simplified compared with other VHF self-oscillating multiresonant gate drivers presented in previous works. The proposed circuit can reduce the long start-up time required in a self-oscillating resonant gate drive circuit and utilize the fast transient capability of VHF converters better. We demonstrate a prototype resonant gate driver, which reduces up to 60% of the gate-driving power in a 20-MHz 32-W Class-E power amplifier using a Si MOSFET. The proposed technique could also drive a high-voltage rated SiC MOSFET at 30 MHz with a slew rate of 2.5 V/ns at the gate, while an integrated hard-switching gate driver only provides a slew rate of 1.8-V/ns and is five times less efficient than the proposed resonant gate driver.

Photograph of the two prototype gate drivers of a SiC MOSFET. (a) Proposed multiresonant gate driver. (b) Conventional hard-switching gate driver IXRFD630