Smart Gate Driver ICs for GaN Power Transistors GaN power transistors are well suited in high frequency, high temperature and high powerdensity applications. This paper investigates different gate driver designs for GaN power transistors, including fundamental driving concerns, current commercial products, popular gate driving features, and design trends for the suppression of gate node ringing. Many smart gate drivers offer features such as intelligent onchip CPU for flexible digital control, adjustable gate voltage levels, multistage driving speed for slewrate control, precise timing control, current sensing capability for closeloop regulations, and active gate driving mode with continuous optimized deadtime. This paper provides an overview to modern gate driver design trends and challenges for GaN power transistors.

OnChip Power Stage and Gate Driver for Fast Switching Applications The demand for lowcost integrated circuits for automotive applications is increasing, while their cost must remain low to keep the product competitive. In this scenario, a highspeed monolithic integrated circuit to control a load current is here proposed. It is composed by a level shifter and a gate driver for a high power switch in a DCDC Buck converter to be realized in a low cost technology. For chip area reduction, an nchannel vertical power transistor is chosen as power transistor. High switching frequency (up to 1MHz) can be used to reduce external components size. The device is optimized to achieve 94.4% efficiency. Implementation concept, schematic and layout will be shown.