Influence of Parasitic Capacitances and Inductances in a Power Electronic Converter on Junction Temperature of Power GaN HEMTs

GaN HEMTs are increasingly popular in power electronics applications. Their main advantage over other power semiconductor devices is low switching losses. However, it makes them also more sensitive to parasitic inductances and capacitances occurring in the circuit. They not only influence the waveforms of terminal currents and voltages by introducing overvoltages and overcurrents but also switching losses and, consequently, junction temperature. In the paper, the influence of parasitic elements occurring in the circuit on the junction temperature of GaN HEMTs operating in synchronous buck DC-DC converter is presented and discussed.