A GaN driver IC with novel highly digitally adaptive dead-time control for Synchronous Rectifier Buck Converter

GaN devices operating at reverse conduction region causing excessive conduction loss. Therefore, the GaN based switching converters are required to minimize the dead-time. This paper proposes a novel highly digitally adaptive dead-time control for GaN driver. A driver integrated circuit (IC) is designed in 0.18μm BCD GEN2 process to verify the concept. The measurement result achieves 0.7ns dead-time at 2A and efficiency can improve 2.1% at 2A full load compared to 10ns fixed dead-time counterpart.