Design and implementation of a low-cost and compact floating gate drive power circuit for GaN-based flying capacitor multi-level converters

A major challenge in the implementation of flying capacitor multi-level (FCML) converters is providing power to the gate drive circuits. A common method is to use isolated DC/DC converters, which are bulky, expensive and energy inefficient. This work discusses the design and implementation of an alternative gate drive power supply circuit, which utilizes three techniques termed cascaded bootstrap, double charge pump and gate-driven charge pump. These techniques leverage the inherent properties of GaN switches and the FCML topology to transfer power to floating switches, and can be implemented with capacitors and diodes only. Experimental results show that the proposed circuit can cut the size of the power stage of a state-of-the-art 7-level FCML converter by half, at 1/6 of the cost.

[1]  Andrew Stillwell,et al.  A 5-level flying capacitor multi-level converter with integrated auxiliary power supply and start-up , 2017, 2017 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[2]  N. Rouger,et al.  Loss Free Gate Driver Unipolar Power Supply for High Side Power Transistors , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[3]  Laszlo Balogh.  Design And Application Guide For High Speed MOSFET Gate Drive Circuits By , 2006 .

[4]  T.M. Jahns,et al.  A self-boost charge pump topology for a gate drive high-side power supply , 2003, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[5]  Zitao Liao,et al.  A GaN-based flying-capacitor multilevel boost converter for high step-up conversion , 2016, 2016 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE).

[6]  K. Harada,et al.  A Novel Three-Phase Buck Converter with Bootstrap Driver Circuit , 2007, 2007 IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference.

[7]  Christopher Schaef,et al.  Equivalent resistance approach to optimization, analysis and comparison of hybrid/resonant switched-capacitor converters , 2016, 2016 IEEE 17th Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL).

[8]  Chunhua Zhou,et al.  EPC eGaN FETs Reliability Testing - Phase 6 , 2014 .

[9]  Robert C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski,et al.  Design and control of a GaN-based, 13-level, flying capacitor multilevel inverter , 2016, 2016 IEEE 17th Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL).

[10]  Thomas A. Lipo,et al.  A three-level MOSFET inverter for low-power drives , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.

[11]  T.A. Meynard,et al.  Multi-level conversion: high voltage choppers and voltage-source inverters , 1992, PESC '92 Record. 23rd Annual IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference.

[12]  Robert C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski,et al.  Design of a GaN-based, 9-level flying capacitor multilevel inverter with low inductance layout , 2017, 2017 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[13]  Carl Haken,et al.  A high power density power factor correction front end based on a 7-level flying capacitor multilevel converter , 2016, 2016 IEEE 2nd Annual Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC).

[14]  Christian Klumpner,et al.  A Cost-Effective Solution to Power the Gate Drivers of Multilevel Inverters using the Bootstrap Power Supply Technique , 2009, 2009 Twenty-Fourth Annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition.

[15]  Kapil Kesarwani,et al.  Resonant and multi-mode operation of flying capacitor multi-level DC-DC converters , 2015, 2015 IEEE 16th Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL).

[16]  Zitao Liao,et al.  A 2 kW, single-phase, 7-level, GaN inverter with an active energy buffer achieving 216 W/in3 power density and 97.6% peak efficiency , 2016, 2016 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[17]  Robert C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski,et al.  A power supply circuit for gate driver of GaN-based flying capacitor multi-level converters , 2016, 2016 IEEE 4th Workshop on Wide Bandgap Power Devices and Applications (WiPDA).