A High-Frequency Dual-Channel Isolated Resonant Gate Driver With Low Gate Drive Loss for ZVS Full-Bridge Converters

As switching frequency increases, to reduce the gate drive loss combined with the zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) technique is meaningful for the widely used full-bridge (FB) converters. A dual-channel isolated resonant gate driver (RGD) is proposed in this paper. The proposed RGD is able to provide two isolated complementary drive signals for a pair of power MOSFETs in one bridge leg. Furthermore, the proposed RGD reduces about 79% gate drive loss compared to the conventional voltage source driver (VSD). In addition, the negative gate drive voltage provided by the proposed RGD prevents the false trigger problem in the FB converters. The comparison to the conventional VSDs demonstrates the power loss reduction achieved by the proposed RGD. The principle of operation and optimum design of the proposed RGD are given in detail. A 200-VDC input, 48-V/20-A output, and 500-kHz phase-shift ZVS FB converter with the proposed RGD was built to verify the advantages and efficiency improvement.