The small overvoltage margin is a critical concern for the gate reliability and driver design of enhancement-mode (E-mode) p-gate GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs). This presentation introduces the significantly superior gate overvoltage robustness demonstrated in a novel 650 V power ICeGaNTM (Integrated Circuit Enhancement GaN), which monolithically integrates a smart gate interface with the p-gate GaN power HEMT. A circuit testbed is developed to characterize the gate overvoltage boundary under soft switching (SSW) and hard switching (HSW) conditions. The ICeGaNTM device shows a gate-overvoltage boundary of 66 V and 72 V in SSW and HSW, respectively, which is much higher than that of a similarly rated commercial p-gate GaN HEMT (23 V and 25 V in SSW and HSW, respectively). These results show great potential of the monolithic GaN IC to enhance the GaN HEMT gate robustness.
