Wide-Band-Gap power semiconductors based on SiC and GaN offer some significant advantages compared to Si-devices, in particular higher switching speed and higher operating temperature. These features offer potentially increased power density, which makes the temperature management critical especially for the PCB and components to which the GaN is connected. In this paper, an active gate driver with active thermal control is implemented and can be used to alter the losses of a DC/DC buck converter based on GaN transistors, with the aim of reducing the thermal cycling thus improving the converter's lifetime.

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Advanced packaging technologies in Wide band gap devices like GaN avoid wire bonds thereby making the solder joints more susceptible to thermo-mechanical fatigue. To limit the thermal cycling induced failures, an active thermal control scheme using a two step gate driver for a buck converter is presented in this paper. In contrast to the active thermal control techniques employing variation of switching frequency, this method does not alter the converter operation point. A simple temperature control algorithm which actively varies the device losses is proposed. The effectiveness of the control scheme has been validated through experimental results.

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