16.8 A 3-to-40V 10-to-30MHz automotive-use GaN driver with active BST balancing and VSW dual-edge dead-time modulation achieving 8.3% efficiency improvement and 3.4ns constant propagation delay

The growing demand for both reliability and performance in automotive electronics has placed mounting pressure on silicon-based power converters to be increasingly reliable and efficient. Automotive electronics operate from the car battery (V
_IN
) which experiences cold-cranks and load dumps that range from 3V to 40V [1]. This requires power converters, supplied by the battery, to withstand the harsh operating conditions. Compounding these challenges is the growing number of electronics in cars, despite fixed volume and thermal budgets. Gallium Nitride (GaN) FETs have demonstrated merits in alleviating these challenges, due to smaller input/output capacitance and near-zero reverse recovery current in comparison to silicon FETs. These attributes facilitate highly efficient power conversion due to a ×10 reduction in switching losses, and thus enable high switching frequency (f
_SW
) operation to reduce the PCB footprint and lower cost.