High temperature GaN gate driver in SOI CMOS technology

Power electronics is a rapidly developing application area for high temperature electronics. Wide bandgap semiconductors have intrinsic advantages for high temperature operation due to the large bandgap in comparison to silicon based semiconductors. Especially GaN is a promising material for power semiconductors due to the possibility to process GaN on silicon carrier wafers, which results in lower device costs in comparison to SiC. In addition GaN provides higher switching frequencies and lower on-resistances of power devices. In combination these advantages enable the design of high performing, small size power modules operating at elevated temperatures. However, in order to exploit all benefits from GaN technology, new approaches in driver design are necessary. In this work a GaN specific gate driver supporting increased switching frequency, low driver output resistance, and GaN specific control voltages is presented. The driver has been implemented in a 0.35 micron thin film SOI-CMOS technology allowing high temperature operation up to 250 °C. The driver output characteristic is digitally adjustable with configuration data stored in an on-chip non-volatile memory based on EEPROM.