Gate Driving Techniques for Medium Voltage GaN Bidirectional Switch

Abstract:
A medium voltage (MV) Gallium Nitride (GaN) bidirectional switch (BDS) is a common-source GaN device, developed to replace two back-to-back Silicon (Si) MOSFETs. To reduce the die size for MV GaN BDS, the common-source terminal is not accessible to the users, which complicates gate driving, especially in high-side switch applications. This paper presents the conduction states of the GaN BDS and discusses methods for switching it with existing gate drivers and discrete components.