TI extends family of GaN fet driver ICs
1 min read
Texas Instruments has introduced a low side gate driver for use with mosfets and Gallium Nitride (GaN) power field effect transistors (fets) in high density power converters.
The new LM5114 drives GaN fets and mosfets in low side applications, such as synchronous rectifiers and power factor converters. Together with the LM5113, the industry's first 100V half bridge GaN fet driver announced in 2011, the family is designed to provide a complete isolated dc/dc conversion driver solution for high power GaN fets and mosfets used in high performance telecom, networking and data centre applications.
According to TI, the LM5114 drives both standard mosfets and GaN fets by using independent sink and source outputs from a 5V supply voltage. It features a high 7.6-A peak turn off current capability needed in high power applications where larger or paralleled fets are used. The increased pull down strength also enables it to drive GaN fets properly. The independent source and sink outputs eliminate the need for a diode in the driver path and allows tight control of the rise and fall times.
