A Comparative Study of GaN HEMT and Si MOSFET-Based Active Clamp Forward Converters

Xiaobin Li, Hongbo Ma, Junhong Yi, Song Lu and Jianping Xu
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Xiaobin Li: School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Hongbo Ma: School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Junhong Yi: School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Song Lu: School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China
Jianping Xu: School of Electrical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 611756, China

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-14

Abstract: Compared with conventional forward converters, active clamp forward (ACF) converters have many advantages, including lower voltage stress on the primary power devices, the ability to switch at zero voltage, reduced EMI and duty cycle operation above 50%. Thus, it has been the most popular solution for the low bus voltage applications, such as 48 V and 28 V. However, because of the poor performance of Si MOSFETs, the efficiency of active clamp forward converters is difficult to further improved. Focusing on the bus voltage of 28 V with 18~36 V voltage range application, the Gallium Nitride high electron-mobility transistors (GaN HEMT) with ultralow on-resistance, low parasitic capacitances, and no reverse recovery, is incorporated into active clamp forward converters for achieving higher efficiency and power density, in this paper. Meanwhile, the comparative analysis is performed for Si MOSFET and GaN HEMT. In order to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed solution and comparative analysis, two 18~36 V input, 120 W/12 V output, synchronous rectification prototype with different power devices are built and compared in the lab. The experimental results show the GaN version can achieve the efficiency of 95.45%, which is around 1% higher than its counterpart under the whole load condition and the same power density of 2.2 W/cm 3 .

Keywords: GaN HEMT; high-efficiency; active clamp forward converter; synchronous rectification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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