A 600V GaN-on-Si power IC with integrated gate driver, freewheeling diode, temperature and current sensors and auxiliary devices

A lateral GaN-on-Si power IC is presented, which realizes the core functionality for power converters on-chip. Monolithic integration enhances the functionality of a 600 V, 85mO power transistor by an intrinsic freewheeling diode, gate-driver, current shunt and an isolated temperature sensor. An integrated auxiliary transistor and a diode realize a single-input pre-driver, a current-mirror sensor or a voltage clamp for on-resistance measurement. Gate driver losses were measured up to 70 MHz. A 350V hard-switching half-bridge shows 98.8% efficiency at 600W and 65 kHz. Continuous 40MHz resonant-switching at 200V and 6A triangular peak current was achieved, operating the half-bridge at 50% duty-cycle with a 75 nH air-core inductor. The work demonstrates significant functionality enhancement of large-area GaN power transistors by monolithic integration of additional circuitry at low additional cost and chip area.