High-frequency resonant gate driver with isolated class-E amplifier

Abstract

This paper proposes the high-frequency resonant gate driver, which is based on the class-E amplifier with isolation transformer, for driving SiC MOSFETs. By applying the isolation transformer to the resonant filter, the destruction risk decreases in the proposed driver. It is possible to obtain the sinusoidal driving waveform without distortion because the proposed driver includes the gate capacitance and the gate resistance in the resonant circuit. Additionally, low power consumption of the driver can be achieved by satisfying the class-E zero-voltage switching and zero-derivative switching conditions. Therefore, the thermal problem can be mitigated in the proposed driver. As a result, the proposed driver is suitable for the SiC driver at high frequencies, in particular. The high-frequency SiC drive was confirmed by simple test circuit. Additionally, the 7 MHz SiC class-E amplifier was implemented, which was driven by the proposed driver. The validity of the analytical expressions and the design procedure were shown by the quantitative agreements between analytical and experimental results.