GaN Systems and ON Semi Release 100V High-Speed, Half-Bridge Evaluation Board

GaN Systems announced a 100V High-Speed, Half-Bridge Evaluation Board in collaboration with ON Semiconductor, developed for existing and new PCB designs. The GS-EVB-HB-61008P-ON board allows power electronics designers to easily evaluate GaN for growing 48V market applications, including non-isolated step-down converters, non-isolated step-up converters, and half-bridge and full-bridge converters.

The evaluation board includes an OnSemi NCP51810 GaN driver and two GaN Systems GS61008P E-mode GaN power transistors connected in a high-side, low-side configuration and all necessary drive circuitry. It provides the utmost flexibility of GaN transistor and driver combinations and can be applied in any topology that requires the use of a high-side/low-side FET combination. When connected into an existing power supply, it can replace HS/LS drives and MOSFETs. The evaluation board also offers configurable dead-time control and driver enable/disable functions.

Touting a small size with a simplified yet robust design. the board offers multiple pins to probe the circuit, with HS and LS gate drives, as well as SWN accessible. Additional benefits include a propagation delay of 50 ns max, increased efficiency, paralleling, and the control of rise and fall time for EMI tuning. The OnSemi NCP51810 high-speed gate driver is designed to meet the requirements of driving E-mode GaN HEMT power switches in half-bridge power topologies. Features include a 150V, high-side and low-side gate driver, 200 V/ns dV/dt rating, and protection functions such as an independent under-voltage lockout (UVLO) for high-side and low-side output stages.

The GaN Systems GS61008P is an E-mode GaN-on-silicon power transistor, bottom-side cooled that offers very low on-resistance, low gate charge, junction-to-case thermal resistance, and high current capabilities for demanding high power applications. Additionally, the transistor features a simple gate drive (0 V to 6 V), high switching frequency (> 10 MHz), fast and controllable fall and rise times, reverse current capability, and zero reverse recovery loss.