An Improved Gate-Boosting Gate Driver for Ultrafast Switching of GaN Transistors for Nanosecond Pulse Generation

The fast switching capability of Gallium nitride high-electron-mobility transistors (GaN HEMTs) enables the utilization of the GaN transistors in pulsed power generators such as solid-state impedance-matched Marx generator (IMG). In such applications, the faster rise time of the generated high-voltage and high-current pulses enhances the efficiency of plasma generation in the plasma reactor. Additionally, achieving higher switching speeds is possible by utilizing an enhanced gate driver featuring a high driving current capacity and fast rise/fall times. In this article, an improved gate-boosting driving method, originally proposed for IGBTs and then optimized for SiC MOSFETs, has been proposed and implemented for driving 650 V GaN transistors to reduce their turn-on time as effectively as feasible. In the proposed improved gate driver, the switching performance of the main 650 V GaN transistor has been evaluated in both simulation and experiments under pulse operation with a resistive load up to 610 V and 107 A. The obtained rise time results for the proposed gate driver in simulation and experiments are 1.62 ns and 1.71 ns, respectively. Furthermore, current rise rates of 66.05kA/μs and 62.39kA/μs achieved in simulation and experiments.