A Hybrid Gate Drive for Fast Switching and Crosstalk Suppression of GaN HEMTs

Gallium nitride high electron mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs) have been widely used in high-bandwidth power amplifier, high-frequency converter and other fields due to their superior performance of high switching frequency, low switching loss, and high operation temperature, etc. However, the ultrafast switching speed brings severe crosstalk phenomenon in bridge-leg configurations which greatly decreases the reliability of the devices. In this paper, a hybrid gate drive based on the gate impedance regulation and gate voltage regulation for switching transient crosstalk suppression of GaN HEMTs in bridge-leg configurations is proposed. The circuit topology and operation principles of the proposed gate drive are analyzed in detail. Experiments are carried out on GaN HEMTs IGOT60R070D1 (600V/31A) under different operations. The proposed gate drive decreases the positive crosstalk voltage peaks by 1.86-2.01V and the negative crosstalk voltage peaks by 2.25-6.3V compared with the conventional gate drive, which proves the validity of the proposed drive.