Gate driver

About: Gate driver is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 7532 publications have been published within this topic receiving 75854 citations.

Switch circuit with back gate voltage control and series regulator

Abstract: A switch circuit has an input terminal and an output terminal and when turned on, provides a voltage at its input terminal to its output terminal. A transistor is connected between the input and output terminals. A gate drive circuit is connected to the gate of the transistor and provides a gate drive signal to the gate. The gate drive circuit, in response to a first control signal, causes the gate drive signal to have one of a first voltage derived from an input voltage at the input terminal and a low potential voltage. A back gate drive circuit is connected to a back gate of the transistor and provides a back gate drive signal to the back gate. The back gate drive signal controls a voltage applied to the back gate of the transistor depending on whether the transistor is turned on or off. The switch circuit may be used to selectively supply battery power to a portable electronic device.

A Resonant Gate-Drive Circuit With Optically Isolated Control Signal and Power Supply for Fast-Switching and High-Voltage Power Semiconductor Devices

Abstract: This paper deals with a resonant gate-drive circuit for fast-switching and high-voltage power semiconductor devices, which is equipped with optical fibers for both gate control signal and dc power supply. A resonant inductor connected with the gate terminal makes it possible to charge or discharge the gate-to-source voltage by using the parallel resonance between the inductor and the input capacitance of the device. The optical fibers can be used to deliver the driving power to the gate-drive circuit, because the circuit theoretically causes no power consumption for driving the power device. Moreover, the proposed circuit makes it possible to suppress fluctuations in the gate voltage caused by a rapid change in the drain-to-source voltage. Experimental results are shown to verify the viability of the proposed circuit.

Creative design of symmetric multilevel converter to enhance the circuit's performance

Abstract: In this study, a new symmetric multilevel converter is introduced which is commonly suitable for medium-voltage applications and where higher number of output levels is required. The proposed inverter can generate all levels at the output associated with a lower number of circuit devices including switches and related gate driver circuits for each switch compared with the conventional symmetric cascaded converter, semi-cascaded converter and the recently introduced inverters. Owing to the lower number of circuit devices, the total cost and the installation area are reduced. Another advantage of the proposed inverter over the mentioned topologies is the lower number of on-state switches which causes a reduction on power losses. Simulation and experimental results are presented to validate the practicality of the proposed multilevel structure.

Low power gate driver circuit for thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) using electric charge recycling technique

Abstract: A low power gate driver circuit of a thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) recycles an electric charge. The electric charge is recycled by discharging the electric charge which is stored in a capacitor of a gate line to a capacitor of another gate line, thereby reducing the consumption of power.

A Magnetic Coupling Based Gate Driver for Crosstalk Suppression of SiC MOSFETs

Abstract: Silicon carbide (SiC) devices have attracted widespread attention because of their superior characteristics. However, not only the higher slew rate of drain–source voltage but also the higher slew rate of reverse recovery current can result in a more serious crosstalk problem than Si-based devices in a half-bridge application. Crosstalk suppression should be integrated into the gate driver to ensure the safe operation of SiC devices. Therefore, a specific mathematical analysis is done in this paper to figure out the crosstalk phenomenon. The limitations of the existing suppression methods are illustrated. Thus, a gate driver based on the magnetic coupling is proposed to ensure the gate–source voltage within the safe range, even when the positive and negative spurious pulse voltages appear. The proposed gate driver uses three ring transformers to insulate the control signal and driver power supply. So, it is feasible to drive a half-bridge circuit in the medium or high power applications. By saving optical couplers and isolated drive power supplies, the gate driver can realize fully galvanic isolation and generate the positive and negative gate–source driving voltage simply. The results derived from the proposed mathematical analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed driver in suppressing the spurious pulse voltage are verified by the experiments.