A Monolithic Gallium Nitride Driver with Zero-Voltage-Switching and Dead Time Control

The Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based synchronous buck converter can reduce the power loss on the rectifier diode in an asynchronous buck converter. Dead time should be applied to avoid the shoot-through problem, while the length of the dead time will affect the efficiency of the synchronous buck converter. Therefore, the optimization of dead time is required to improve transmission efficiency. This paper proposes a driver circuit for the synchronous buck converter based on GaN devices with zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) capability and dead time self-adjustment. This work is based on advanced design system (ADS) software. The simulation results indicate that the dead time was reduced from 0.5 $\mu$s to 0.084 $\mu \mathrm{s}$, and the efficiency can be improved from 87.82% to 94.18% when the load resistance is 50 $\Omega$.