Peregrine Semiconductor Unveils the World's Fastest GaN FET Driver

Peregrine’s UltraCMOS Technology Enables GaN Transistors to Achieve Their Performance and Speed Potential

Peregrine Semiconductor Corp. introduces the word’s fastest gallium nitride (GaN) field-effect transistor (FET) driver, the UltraCMOS® PE29100. Built on Peregrine’s UltraCMOS technology, this new GaN driver empowers design engineers to extract the full performance and speed advantages from GaN transistors. Designed to drive the gates of a high-side and a low-side GaN FET in a switching configuration, the PE29100 delivers the industry’s fastest switching speeds, shortest propagation delays and lowest rise and fall times to AC-DC converters, DC-DC converters, class D audio amplifiers and wireless charging applications.

GaN-based FETs are disrupting the power conversion market and are displacing silicon-based metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs). Compared to MOSFETs, GaN FETs operate much faster and have higher switching speeds in the smallest possible volume. The promise of GaN is that it can dramatically reduce the size and weight of any power supply. To reach their performance potential, these high-performance GaN transistors need an optimized gate driver. This FET driver must charge and discharge gate capacitance as fast as possible, and it must have very low propagation delay to allow fast signals. It also must avoid “shoot through” by not turning on high-side and low-side FETs at the same time. The PE29100 is designed specifically for this purpose.

Peregrine’s UltraCMOS technology platform is the driving force behind the PE29100’s industry- leading speed. The technology enables integrated circuits to operate at much faster speeds than conventional CMOS technologies. It empowers Peregrine to manufacture a GaN FET driver with the industry’s shortest propagation delays, the lowest rise and fall times and the fastest switching speeds. This speed advantage results in significantly smaller power converters, which benefits the design engineer with increased power density.

Manufactured on a truly insulating substrate, UltraCMOS technology has no bulk or well junctions, and therefore has low parasitics. UltraCMOS technology also has low on-resistance for improved efficiency and low off-capacitance at higher operating frequency.

Features, Packaging, Price and Availability

The UltraCMOS PE29100 is a half-bridge GaN FET driver with internal dead-time control. The high-speed driver operates up to 33 MHz and handles voltages up to 80 V. It delivers a short propagation delay of 8 ns. It has a rise time of 2.5 ns and fall time of 1.8 ns when driving a 1000 pF load and 1 ns rise and fall times with 100 pF load. The PE29100 has a one-pin, single-phase input mode and has an output source current of 2 A and an output sink current of 4 A.

PE29100 GaN FET Driver Evaluation Kit.

Volume-production parts, samples and evaluation kits are available now. Offered as a 2 × 1.6 mm flip-chip die, the PE29100 is $1.80 each for 1k-quantity orders.