Performance Evaluation of Silicon and GaN Switches for a Small Wireless Power Transfer System

Demetrio Iero, Riccardo Carotenuto, Massimo Merenda, Fortunato Pezzimenti and Francesco Giuseppe Della Corte
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Demetrio Iero: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, delle Infrastrutture e dell’Energia Sostenibile (DIIES), Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Riccardo Carotenuto: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, delle Infrastrutture e dell’Energia Sostenibile (DIIES), Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Massimo Merenda: Center for Digital Safety & Security, Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Giefinggasse 4, 1210 Vienna, Austria
Fortunato Pezzimenti: Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, delle Infrastrutture e dell’Energia Sostenibile (DIIES), Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, 89124 Reggio Calabria, Italy
Francesco Giuseppe Della Corte: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e delle Tecnologie dell’Informazione (DIETI), Università di Napoli Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125 Napoli, Italy

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 9, 1-18

Abstract: In the last few years, the wide diffusion of rechargeable devices has fueled the research interest in wireless power transfer (WPT) technology that offers advantages such as safety, flexibility, and ease of use. Different standards have been developed over the years but a significant part of the global interest is focused on the inductive resonant wireless power transfer. By increasing the resonance frequency, an improvement in the transfer efficiency between transmit and receive coils is generally observed, at the expense, however, of an increase in losses in the switching devices that constitute the transmitting and receiving circuits. This study concerned the performance evaluation of a WPT transmitting circuit built using Gallium Nitride (GaN) or conventional silicon (Si) switching devices, to assess their specific contribution to the overall efficiency of the system. The overall performance of two circuits, respectively based on GaN HEMTs and Si MOSFETs, were compared at frequencies of the order of MHz under different operating conditions. The theory and design choices regarding the WPT circuit, the coils, and the resonant network are also discussed. The comparison shows that the GaN circuit typically performs better than the Si one, but a clear advantage of the GaN solution cannot be established under all operating conditions.

Keywords: wireless power transfer (WPT); Gallium Nitride; GaN HEMT; inductive resonance (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: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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