Active Thermal Control of a DC/DC GaN-based Converter

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.