A Resonant Gate Drive Circuit with Reduced MOSFET Switching and Gate Losses

In this paper, a new resonant gate drive circuit is proposed for power MOSFETs. The proposed circuit achieves quick turn on and turn off transition times to reduce switching loss and conduction loss in power MOSFETS. In addition, it can recover a portion of the CV² gate energy normally dissipated in a conventional driver. The circuit consists of four control switches and a small resonant inductance. The current through the resonant inductance is discontinuous in order to minimize circulating current conduction loss. Experimental results are presented for the proposed driver operating in a boost converter at 1 MHz. At 5 V gate drive, 4% efficiency improvement is achieved. At 12 V gate drive, 6.5% efficiency improvement is achieved