High step-up flyback with low-overshoot voltage stress on secondary GaN rectifier

This paper presents a new technique to mitigate the high voltage stress on the secondary gallium nitride (GaN) transistor in a high step-up flyback application. GaN devices provide a means of achieving high efficiency at hundreds (and thousands) of kHz of switching frequency. Presently however, comm...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Za'im, Radin, Jamaludin, Jafferi, Yusof, Yushaizad, Abd Rahim, Nasrudin
Format: Article
Published: MDPI 2022
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Online Access:http://eprints.um.edu.my/41680/
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Summary:This paper presents a new technique to mitigate the high voltage stress on the secondary gallium nitride (GaN) transistor in a high step-up flyback application. GaN devices provide a means of achieving high efficiency at hundreds (and thousands) of kHz of switching frequency. Presently however, commercially available GaN is limited to only a 650 V absolute voltage rating. Such a limitation is challenging in high step-up flyback applications due to the secondary leakage. The leakage imposes high voltage stress on the secondary GaN rectifier during its turn-off transient. Such stress may cause irreversible damage to the GaN device. A new method of leakage bypass is presented to mitigate the high voltage stress issue. The experimental results suggest that when compared to conventional secondary active clamp, a 2.3-fold reduction in overshoot voltage stress percentage is achievable with the technique. As a result, it is possible to utilize GaN as the rectifier while keeping the peak voltage stress within the 650 V limitation with the technique.