Monolithically Integrated Gate Driver for MHz Switching with an External Inductor as a Current Source

This work presents the design of a gate driver, which is monolithically integrated on a single die with power p-gate Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistors (p-GaN HEMT). In order to improve the switching speed of the power device, it is effective to reduce parasitic components on the gate terminal by monolithically integrating a gate driver and the power HEMT. The proposed integrated gate driver works with an external inductor as a current source to charge or discharge the gate terminal of the integrated power HEMT. The fabricated chip can successfully operate at 10 MHz. The measurement results showed that the V
_DS
transition of the GaN IC is faster than the conventional method, and the GaN IC reduced transition time by 46% at turn-on and 20% at turn-off under off state V
_DS
of 100 V and on state I
_D
of 5 A.