Two comparison-alternative high temperature PCB-embedded transformer designs for a 2 W gate driver power supply

With fast power semiconductor devices based on GaN and SiC becoming more common, there is a need for improved driving circuits. Transformers with smaller inter-winding capacitance in the isolated gate drive power supply helps in reducing the conducted EMI emission from the power converter to auxiliary sources. This paper presents a transformer with a small volume, a low power loss and a small inter-capacitance in a gate drive power supply to fast switching devices, such as GaN HEMT and SiC MOSFET. The transformer core is embedded into PCB to increase the integration density. Two different transformer designs, the coplanar-winding PCB embedded transformer and the toroidal PCB embedded transformer, are presented and compared. The former has a 0.8 pF inter-capacitance and the latter has 85% efficiency with 73 W/in³ power density. Both designs are dedicated to a 2 W gate drive power supply for wide-band-gap device, which can operate at 200 °C ambient temperature.