TIDUF22 January 2023
This design has an independent half-bridge GaN daughterboard as the switching leg, which makes the design easy to mounted to the main heat sink. The bottom GaN interfaces to DSP directly, while the top GaN needs an isolator ISO7721F since the reference point is different from DSP. This isolator also provides an isolated GaN FAULT signal to the MCU to create a one-shot trigger protection.
To power on the top GaN, a flybuck auxiliary power supply with the TPS43208 device is implemented to provide an isolated 15-V rail to the top GaN. This power supply also generates a non-isolated 3.3-V rail to ISO7721F and an AND gate of the SN74AHC1G108, which collects FAULT signals from both the top and bottom GaN and then reports the information to DSP.
The temperature signal of the bottom GaN is also routed to the digital-signal processor (DSP) which gives the measure of the junction temperature.