GaN Power Devices for Efficient Power Conversion E-Book

Alex Lidow

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 835

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

An up-to-date and concise review of GaN transistor design and applications

In the newly revised fourth edition of GaN Power Devices for Efficient Power Conversion, a team of distinguished researchers and practicing engineers deliver a concise and effective new guide to designing small, energy-efficient, and inexpensive products with GaN transistors. This new edition covers all relevant new GaN technology advancements, allowing students and practicing engineers to get, and stay ahead of, the curve with GaN device and circuit technology.

You’ll explore applications including DC to DC converters, solar inverters, motor drive controllers, satellite electronics, and LiDAR devices. The 4th edition offers critical updates for space applications, vertical GaN, and driving transistors and integrated circuits. New chapters on reliability testing advancements, device wear out mechanisms, thermal management, and the latest developments in monolithic integration round out the book.

Readers will also find:

• The latest updates on significant technology improvements, like integrated circuits, reliability studies, and new applications
• Comprehensive explorations of integrated circuit construction, characteristics, reliability results, and applications
• Practical discussions of specific circuit designs, layout, and thermal dissipation when designing power conversion systems
• Chapters written by practicing expert leaders in the power semiconductor field and industry pioneers

Perfect for practicing power conversion engineers, GaN Power Devices for Efficient Power Conversion will also benefit electrical engineering students and device scientists in the field of power electronics.

Leseprobe

GaN Power Devices for Efficient Power Conversion

Fourth Edition

Alex Lidow

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

USA

Michael de Rooij

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

USA

John Glaser

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

USA

Alejandro Pozo

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

USA

Shengke Zhang

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

USA

Marco Palma

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

Italy

David Reusch

Kilby Labs

Texas Instruments

USA

Johan Strydom

Kilby Labs

Texas Instruments

USA

This edition first published 2025© 2025 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Edition HistoryGaN Power Devices for Efficient Power Conversion, 1e, 2012, 2e, 2014, 3e, 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

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The right of Alex Lidow, Michael de Rooij, John Glaser, Alejandro Pozo, Shengke Zhang, Marco Palma, David Reusch, and Johan Strydom to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with law.

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Applied for:Hardback: 9781394286959

Cover Design: WileyCover Image: © Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC), epc-co.com.

In memory of Eric Lidow,the original power conversion pioneer.

Foreword

It is well established that the CMOS inverter and DRAM are the two basic building blocks of digital signal processing. Decades of improving inverter switching speed and memory density under Moore’s Law has unearthed numerous applications that were previously unimaginable. Power processing is built upon two similar functional building blocks: power switches and energy storage devices, such as the inductor and capacitor. The push for higher switching frequencies has always been a major catalyst for performance improvement and size reduction.

Since its introduction in the mid‐1970s, the power MOSFET, with its greater switching speed, has replaced the bipolar transistor. To date, the power MOSFET has been perfected up to its theoretical limit. Device switching losses can be reduced further with the help of soft‐switching techniques. However, its gate‐drive loss is still excessive, limiting the switching frequency to the low hundreds of kilohertz in most applications.

The recent introduction of GaN, with much improved figures of merit, opens the door for operating frequencies well into the megahertz range. A number of design examples are illustrated in this book and other literatures, citing impressive power density improvements by a factor of 5 or 10. However, I believe the potential contribution of GaN goes beyond the simple measures of efficiency and power density. GaN has the potential to have a profound impact on our design practice, including a possible paradigm shift.

Power electronics is interdisciplinary. The essential constituencies of a power electronics system include switches, energy storage devices, circuit topology, system packaging, electromagnetic interactions, thermal management, EMC/EMI, and manufacturing considerations. When the switching frequency is low, these various constituencies are loosely coupled. Current design practices address these issues in piecemeal fashion. When a system is designed for a much higher frequency, the components are arranged in proximity to minimize undesirable parasitics. This invariably leads to unwanted electromagnetic coupling and thermal interaction.

This increasing intricacy between components and circuits requires a more holistic approach, concurrently taking into account all electrical, mechanical, electromagnetic, and thermal considerations. Furthermore, all operations should be executed correctly, both spatially and temporally. These challenges would prompt circuit designers to pursue a more integrated approach. For power electronics, integration will take place at the functional level or the subsystem level whenever feasible and practical. These integrated modules will serve as the basic building blocks of further system integration. In this manner, customization can be achieved using standardized building blocks, much the same way as digital electronics systems. With the economy of scale in manufacturing, this will bring significant cost reduction in power electronics equipment and unearth numerous new applications previously precluded due to high cost.

GaN will create fertile ground for research and technology innovations for years to come. Dr. Alex Lidow mentions in this book that it took thirty years for power MOSFET to reach its current state of maturity. While GaN is still in an early stage of development, a few technical challenges require immediate attention. These issues are recognized by the authors and addressed in the book.

High d

v

/d

t

and high d

i

/d

t

render most of the commercially available gate drive circuits unsuitable for GaN devices, especially for the high‐side switch.

Chapter 3

offers many important insights in the design of the gate drive circuit.

Device packaging and circuit layout are critical. The unwanted effects of parasitics should be contained. Soft‐switching techniques can be very useful for this purpose. A number of important issues related to packaging and layout are addressed in detail in

Chapters 4

–

6

.

High‐frequency magnetic design is critical. The choice of suitable magnetic materials becomes rather limited when the switching frequency goes beyond 2–3 MHz. Additionally, more creative high‐frequency magnetics design practice should be explored. Several recent publications suggest design practices that defy the conventional wisdom and practice, yielding interesting results.

The impact of high frequency to EMI/EMC has yet to be explored.

Dr. Alex Lidow is a well‐respected leader in the field. Alex has always been in the forefront of technology and a trendsetter. While serving as the CEO of IR, he initiated GaN development in the early 2000s. He also led the team in developing the first integrated DrMOS and DirectFET®, which are now commonly used in powering the new generation of microprocessors and many other applications.

This book is a gift to power electronics engineers. It offers a comprehensive view, from device physics, characteristics, and modeling to device and circuit layout considerations and gate drive design, with design considerations for both hard switching and soft switching. Additionally, it further illustrates the utilization of GaN in a wide range of emerging applications.

It is very gratifying to note that three of the authors of this book are from CPES, joining with Dr. Lidow in the effort to develop this new generation of wide‐band‐gap power switches – presumably a game‐changing device with a scale of impact yet to be defined.

Dr. Fred C. Lee

Director, Center for Power Electronics Systems

University Distinguished Professor, Virginia Tech

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the many exceptional contributions toward the content of this book from our colleagues.

Jianjun (Joe) Cao, Robert Beach, Alana Nakata, Yanping Ma, and Robert Strittmatter provided much of the technical foundation behind today’s GaN transistors and integrated circuits. Adolfo Herrera made major contributions to Chapter 6 on thermal management. Steve Colino and Tiziano Morganti were the driving force behind our class D audio in Chapter 12. Tony Marini, Rob Strittmatter, and Max Zafrani provided much of the data used in Chapter 15 on space electronics.

The authors really do stand on the shoulders of these giants.

A special thank you is due to Joe Engle who, in addition to reviewing and editing all corners of this work, put all the logistics together to make it happen. Sometimes these logistics meant long continuous hours of editing, coupled with amazing diplomacy working with a wide spectrum of personalities. Jenny Somers, the lead graphic artist on this work, as well as many other GaN‐related papers and application notes, deserves a medal of honor as well as an honorary degree in GaN for her creative and extremely accurate projection of scientific data into documentary communications.

A note of gratitude to the editors and staff at Wiley who were instrumental in undertaking a diligent review of the text and shepherding the book through the production process.

Finally, we thank Archie Huang and Sue Lin for believing in GaN from the beginning. Their vision and support will change the semiconductor industry forever.

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation

July 2024

Alex Lidow

Michael de Rooij

John Glaser

Alejandro Pozo

Shengke Zhang

Marco Palma

David Reusch

Johan Strydom

1GaN Technology Overview

1.1 Silicon Power MOSFETs: 1976–2010

For over three decades, power management efficiency and cost have improved steadily as innovations in power Metal Oxide Silicon Field‐Effect Transistor (MOSFET) structures, technology, and circuit topologies have kept pace with the growing need for electrical power in our daily lives. In the new millennium, however, the rate of improvement has slowed as the silicon power MOSFET asymptotically approaches its theoretical bounds.

Power MOSFETs first appeared in 1976 as alternatives to bipolar transistors. These majority‐carrier devices were faster, more rugged, and had higher current gain than their minority‐carrier counterparts (for a discussion of basic semiconductor physics, a good reference is [1]