An Experimental Performance Comparison of GaNand Silicon based FETs in an Emergency LEDDriver

Stainthorpe, B; Dahidah, M; Pickert, V

doi:10.1109/WiPDAEurope62087.2024.10797257

An Experimental Performance Comparison of GaNand Silicon based FETs in an Emergency LEDDriver

Lookup NU author(s): Ben Stainthorpe, Dr Mohamed Dahidah, Professor Volker Pickert

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

Gallium Nitride (GaN) High-Electron-MobilityTransistors (HEMTs) are currently prominent in the powerelectronics literature due to the increasing viability of use acrossall industries. However, there are still gaps in the GaN relatedliterature due to the vast coverage of power electronics. One suchgap is in understanding the efficiency benefit of GaN devicescompared to Silicon in an Emergency LED Driver application.In addition, the RDSon and parasitic capacitances of the GaNdevice play important roles in selecting the optimal device forthe converter. This paper presents experimental results of adirect swap of various Schottky Gate E-Mode GaN devicescompared to an NMOS Silicon device for a Low Power (<3.5W), Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS), Boundary Conduction Mode(BCM) Emergency LED driver converter, addressing the gap inliterature. A 20% efficiency boost over silicon is observed at 1.3MHz, using a Schottky diode antiparallel to the FET.