1 kW MHz Wideband Class E Power Amplifier

The Class E power amplifier is widely used in high-frequency applications due to its simplicity and use of only one ground-referenced switch. However, due to their resonant nature, Class E power amplifiers are usually tuned to operate at a fixed frequency. Extending the bandwidth of these switch-mode power amplifiers is beneficial in many applications such as plasma generators and wireless power transfer systems. In this paper, we present a 1 kW wideband Class E power amplifier using SiC MOSFETs that achieves 93% efficiency at 13.56 MHz with a bandwidth of ±1 MHz. We incorporate a reactance compensation network in the output loading stage to achieve wide-band operation, and design a custom gate drive circuit to reduce the gate power loss of the SiC devices and improve thermal performance compared to using a gate driver IC. The total gate power of one SiC device is measured to be 1.55 W at 13.56 MHz.