Resonant Gate Driver Design for High Frequency Switching

This paper introduces an improvement of high frequency gate driver circuit for MOSFET in synchronous buck converter (SBC) circuit. In high frequency applications, the effect of gate driver circuit on overall performance of converter becomes critical. The resonant technique is implemented in the driver with the integration of linear transformer which capable of switching both rectifier and synchronous MOSFETs. The coupled inductors in the transformer will allow effective circulating current during its charging and discharging periods. Pspice simulation of the proposed resonant gate driver circuit has been studied to validate the operation and performance of the SBC circuit in terms of power losses and switching speed. The results reveal that the total gate driver losses of the proposed gate driver circuit have reduced by more than 50 %. In addition the energy recovery speed has improved at least 30 % faster than the conventional gate driver circuit. The details are presented in the paper.