Ultralow Input–Output Capacitance PCB-Embedded Dual-Output Gate-Drive Power Supply for 650 V GaN-Based Half-Bridges

Wide-bandgap devices have been widely used to reduce the size and increase the efficiency of power converters by operating at a high switching frequency, at the expense of heightened radiated and conducted electromagnetic inference (EMI) emissions, of which the latter circulates through the power loop and ancillary circuitry. In effect, the parasitic isolation capacitance <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C_{i}$</tex-math></inline-formula> of the gate-driver power supply represents a key EMI propagation path to be controlled in order to ensure the operational integrity of power converters. To this end, this paper proposes an integrated, dual-output gate-drive power supply for gallium-nitride (GaN) 650 V, 60 A, half-bridge phase legs, rated at 2 W (2 × 1 W), 15 to 2 × 7 V, featuring an ultralow <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C_{i}$</tex-math></inline-formula> of 1.6 pF, an output-to-output parasitic capacitance of 1.6 pF, a power density of 72 W/in<sup>3</sup>, and an efficiency of 85%. All this is attained using an active-clamp flyback converter switching at 1 MHz using 65 V GaN high-electron-mobility transistor devices and Schottky output rectifiers, and a Pareto-optimized transformer design minimizing its interwinding capacitances, volume, and losses. Finally, the transformer is fully embedded in a printed circuit board (PCB) material, doubling as a substrate for the topside active layer of the power supply. The paper presents the complete design procedure, processing, and experimental demonstration of the proposed integrated power supply, evaluating as well the reliability impact of the magnetic-PCB material interface in high ambient temperature applications (>200 °C).

[1]  Fred C. Lee,et al.  High frequency integrated Point of Load (POL) module with PCB embedded inductor substrate , 2013, 2013 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition.

[2]  Wei Liang,et al.  27.12MHz GaN resonant power converter with PCB embedded resonant air core inductors and capacitors , 2015, 2015 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE).

[3]  Fred C. Lee,et al.  Characterization of Low Temperature Sintered Ferrite Laminates for High Frequency Point-of-Load (POL) Converters , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics.

[4]  He Li,et al.  A Gate Drive With Power Over Fiber-Based Isolated Power Supply and Comprehensive Protection Functions for 15-kV SiC MOSFET , 2016, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics.

[5]  Enea Bianda,et al.  PCB Embedded Semiconductors for Low-Voltage Power Electronic Applications , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology.

[6]  Dushan Boroyevich,et al.  Gate driver design for 1.7kV SiC MOSFET module with Rogowski current sensor for shortcircuit protection , 2016, 2016 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[7]  Fred C. Lee,et al.  Design consideration of MHz active clamp flyback converter with GaN devices for low power adapter application , 2016, 2016 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[8]  Rolando Burgos,et al.  Assessment of switching frequency impact on the prediction capability of common-mode EMI emissions of sic power converters using unterminated behavioral models , 2015, 2015 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[9]  Bruno Allard,et al.  High-Temperature GaN Active-Clamp Flyback Converter With Resonant Operation Mode , 2016, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Power Electronics.

[10]  Tore M. Undeland,et al.  On understanding switching and EMI performance of SiC power JFETs to design a 75 W high voltage flyback converter , 2013, 2013 15th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications (EPE).

[11]  Rolando Burgos,et al.  2 MHz high-density integrated power supply for gate driver in high-temperature applications , 2016, 2016 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[12]  Jean-Christophe Crebier,et al.  Characterization and Analysis of an Innovative Gate Driver and Power Supplies Architecture for HF Power Devices With High dv/dt , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[13]  Dushan Boroyevich,et al.  Two comparison-alternative high temperature PCB-embedded transformer designs for a 2 W gate driver power supply , 2016, 2016 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE).

[14]  Peter Anders,et al.  PCB embedded power package with reinforced top-side chip contacts , 2016, 2016 6th Electronic System-Integration Technology Conference (ESTC).

[15]  Jason Zhang,et al.  Active clamp flyback using GaN power IC for power adapter applications , 2017, 2017 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[16]  M. Roellig,et al.  Reliability assessment of discrete passive components embedded into PCB core , 2014, 2014 15th International Conference on Thermal, Mechanical and Mulit-Physics Simulation and Experiments in Microelectronics and Microsystems (EuroSimE).

[17]  Cyril Buttay,et al.  GaN Active-Clamp Flyback Converter with Resonant Operation Over a Wide Input Voltage Range , 2016 .

[18]  Fred C. Lee,et al.  Improving the efficiency and dynamics of 3D integrated POL , 2015, 2015 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC).

[19]  Fred C. Lee,et al.  A new core loss model for rectangular AC voltages , 2014, 2014 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE).

[20]  Khai D. T. Ngo,et al.  A 30-W flyback converter operating at 5 MHz , 2014, 2014 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition - APEC 2014.

[21]  N. Oswald,et al.  An Experimental Investigation of the Tradeoff between Switching Losses and EMI Generation With Hard-Switched All-Si, Si-SiC, and All-SiC Device Combinations , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.