Improved Efficiency in a 10 W Class-Φ₂ Converter Utilizing a Resonant Gate Drive

Abstract

GaN power devices are popular for VHF power conversion due to their favorable features such as small capacitances, low threshold voltages, and compact size. Here, we present the design of a class-Φ₂ power converter that uses a GaN switching device, analyzing its performance delivering 10 W at 50 MHz. We conducted a comparative study between two different gate drive topologies for this converter: a conventional gate driver IC and a resonant gate drive topology. The conventional implementation achieves a total efficiency of 78.7%, while the resonant topology reaches 84.1%, demonstrating the importance of minimizing gating losses to design high efficiency VHF converters.