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Design High Speed MOSFET Gate Drive Circuits

Electronics, Instrumentation Design and Engineering

Design And Application Guide for High Speed MOSFET Gate Drive Circuits
Laszlo Balogh
40 Pages

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Design And Application Guide for High Speed MOSFET Gate Drive Circuits

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to demonstrate a systematic approach to design high performance gate drive circuits for high speed switching applications. It is an informative collection of topics offering a "one-stop-shopping" to solve the most common design challenges. Thus it should be of interest to power electronics engineers at all levels of experience.

The most popular circuit solutions and their performance are analyzed, including the effect of parasitic components, transient and extreme operating conditions. The discussion builds from simple to more complex problems starting with an overview of MOSFET technology and switching operation. Design procedure for ground referenced and high side gate drive circuits, AC coupled and transformer isolated solutions are described in great details. A special chapter deals with the gate drive requirements of the MOSFETs in synchronous rectifier applications.

Several, step-by-step numerical design examples complement the paper

Introduction

MOSFET - is an acronym for Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistor and it is the key component in high frequency, high efficiency switching applications across the electronics industry. It might be surprising, but FET technology was invented in 1930, some 20 years before the bipolar transistor. The first signal level FET transistors were built in the late 1950's while power MOSFETs have been available from the mid 1970's. Today, millions of MOSFET transistors are integrated in modem electronic components, from microprocessors, through "discrete" power transistors.

The focus of this topic is the gate drive requirements of the power MOSFET in various switch mode power conversion applications.