A Non-Isolated Bipolar Gate Driver with Self-Driven Negative Bias Generator in High-Side-Only Application

With the development of power electronic converters, size reducing and reliability extending are desired. For modern converter that utilises inductors or transformers, the dimensions of magnetic components are commonly inversely proportional to its switching frequency. With the increase of switching frequency, higher dv/dt may cause miss-triggering faults and unstable turn-off. Those issues can be relieved by applying a negative bias to conduct the turn-off. However, a separate DC-DC converter is normally required to generate this negative voltage. In this paper, a novel self-driven negative bias generator for high-side switch is introduced. The novel gate driver can provide bipolar gate driving capability without the need for a separate negative voltage supply. A prototype converter has been built and verified that the proposed bipolar gate driver could effectively generates the required negative voltage for power semiconductor driving without using a charge pump or switching converter.