Design of a high speed power MOSFET driver and its use in a half-bridge converter

A study of high speed conversion circuits has been conducted to determine the aspects which limit speed and power. This has led to the design and construction of a high speed MOSFET driver, with gate switching times below 10 ns. A half bridge, using MOSFETs with these drivers, has been built and demonstrated at a range of frequencies up to 13.8 MHz. The half bridge has been adopted as its makes mode efficient use of the voltage ratings of power devices than resonant single MOSFET designs, and allows operation in the hundreds of watts from a 400 V rail with 500 V devices.<>