Investigation of potential benefits of MOSFETs hard-switching and soft-switching converters at cryogenic temperature

This paper presents an investigation of potential advantages of MOSFETs hard-switching and soft-switching converter at liquid nitrogen temperature (LNT). Circuits are proposed, analyzed and built to demonstrate the different switching performance at room temperature and reduced temperature. The experimental results showed both hard-switching and soft-switching operation of MOSFETs in a boost converter is improved at 77 K. The gate drive circuit needs to be designed specially for MOSFETs to work well at liquid nitrogen temperature.