A full GaN-Integrated Sawtooth Generator based on Enhancement-mode

AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMT for GaN Power Converters

Xueteng Li, Miao Cui, Wen Liu*

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Suzhou, China
Wen.Liu@xjtlu.edu.cn

Abstract— AlGaN/GaN metal-insulator-semiconductor high

electron mobility transistors (MIS-HEMTs) have superior E-mode D-mode
advantages like low leakage current and large gate swing. To
fully use those advantages, this paper proposes a monolithic
sawtooth generator circuit, which can generate a 100 kHz
sawtooth waveform with a peak-to-peak voltage of around 3.5 V
under 10 V power supply. The integrated circuit is calibrated
and simulated by Advanced Design System (ADS). Good
agreement between simulations and experimental results
indicates the feasibility of GaN MIS-HEMTs on high power
electronics application. Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of MIS-HEMTs

Keywords: E-mode AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs, integrated can generate a 100 kHz sawtooth waveform with around 3.5
circuits, sawtooth generator V peak-to-peak voltage under 10V power supply.

I. INTRODUCTION II. MIS-HEMT MODEL CALIBRATION

AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs is one kind of the promising
candidates for next-generation power electronic application,
due to fast switching response, high breakdown voltage and
large gate swing. The AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs can provide
more efficient and compact solutions on power conversion,
high-speed digital and mixed-signal applications [1-5].
Compared to normal HEMTs, GaN-based MIS-HEMTs
greatly suppress the gate leakage by several orders of
magnitude and enable the capability of larger current and gate
swing [6]. These advantages are more significant in
enhancement-mode HEMTs [5]. Most recently published
studies focused on integrated circuits (ICs) base-on GaN
HEMTs [1-2] or P-GaN HEMTs [7], which usually have large
leakage current and small gate swing less than 8 V [1] due to
To obtain accuracy of the simulation, the AlGaN/GaN
E/D-mode MIS-HEMTs fabricated in our previous report [4]
are measured for calibration. The MISHEMTs schematic
diagram is shown in Fig. 1. Using the same model calibration
approaches as in [3], the measured and ADS simulated I-V
characteristics of MIS-HEMTs are shown in Fig. 2. The
threshold voltage is -10.7 V for D-mode MIS-HEMTs and is
+0.3 V for E-mode MIS-HEMTs at room temperature. The
maximum current density is 217 mA/mm (at Vgs = 0 V) in D-
mode MIS-HEMTs and is 128 mA/mm (at Vgs = 8 V) in E-
mode MIS-HEMTs. The good matching between the
300
(a) (b)
300
Vgs= -14 ~ 0 V Vds = 10 V
Ids (mA/mm)

Ids (mA/mm)
the absence of dielectrics. In this work, GaN ICs based on E- 200 200
mode MIS-HEMTs are proposed and evaluated for large input D-mode
Step = 2 V
tolerance, which benefits circuits with large overshoots. 100 100
Besides, Sun. et al. proved the feasibility of using full
AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMT configuration for integrated circuits 0 0
(ICs) by simulation based on ADS platform [3]. 0 2 4 6 8 10 -14 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0
Vds (V) Vgs (V)
Sawtooth generator is an essential part in pulse width
modulation (PWM) circuit, which is widely adopted as gate 150 250
(c) Vgs= 0 ~ 8 V (d) Vds = 10 V
control ICs in power converters [1]. Wang et al. have detailly 200
Ids (mA/mm)

Ids (mA/mm)

introduced the PWM ICs base-on GaN HEMTs, which 100

E-mode 150
include a sawtooth generator with around 0.75 V peak-to-peak Step = 2 V 100
output voltage under 5 V power supply [1]. To investigate the 50
potential of MIS structure over conventional HEMT devices 50
in power ICs, this paper demonstrates a GaN-based sawtooth 0 0
generator ICs using monolithically integrated enhancement 0 4 2
6 8 10 -2 0 2 4 6 8
Vds (V) V gs (V)
(E)-mode and depletion (D)-mode MIS-HEMTs. The circuit Fig. 2. Experimental (Symbols) and simulated (Lines) I-V characteristics
(Ids-Vds and Ids-Vgs) of (a, b) D-mode (c, d) E-mode MIS-HEMTs.

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 TABLE I. PARAMETER DETAIL OF COMPONENTS

Parameters Values
D-mode MIS-HEMTs S1=S2=5, S5=200, S6=S7=40
(width in μm)
E-mode MIS-HEMTs S3=S4=S8=1000, S9=1200
(width in μm)
Passive components RFB=R1=50KΩ, Csaw=4.2nF
Voltage supply Vref=3V, Vdd=10V

Fig. 3. Schematic circuit diagram of the sawtooth generator
Fig. 4. (a) Hysteresis comparator circuit configuration and (b) theoretical
output waveform. The red lines are the positive feedback parts. The arrows
show the sweep directions of the input voltage
measured and simulated data demonstrate the reliability of the
ADS models on following circuit design.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Normally, sawtooth wave generator is composed of a
hysteresis comparator and a charging unit [1]. The overall
design circuit is shown in Fig.3. The detailed parameters are
shown in Table I.
A. Hysteresis comparator
The hysteresis comparator is a single comparator added
with a positive feedback as in Fig. 4. One cycle of sawtooth
wave can be separated into two stages, the rising and falling
stage. Firstly, assume the output sawtooth signal Vsaw is
smaller than low switching threshold voltage (VTL), so that
comparator output Vout is in high level (VoH) as in Fig. 4. (b).
Consequently, the high level Vout passes through the two
inverters in charging unit to charge the sawtooth capacitor
Csaw (Vsaw rising). When Vsaw reaches high switching
threshold voltage VTH, the comparator output Vout changes to
low level (VoL) as in Fig. 4. (b). Consequently, the low level
Vout passes through the two inverters in charging unit to
discharge Csaw, leading to a decrease of Vsaw. Then falling
stage ends when Vsaw reaches VTL as beginning. Theoretically,
the switching thresholds of the hysteresis comparator can be
controlled by resistors as following.
R1
VTH = VoH
R1 + RFB
B. Sawtooth generator (close loop)
Combining the hysteresis comparator with the charging unit,
the sawtooth wave has been generated. By changing the
charging capacitor Csaw, the frequency is designed as 100
kHz. The control algorithm is in Eq. 2, where Ic is the average
charging or discharging current. Finally, the output
waveform is shown in Fig. 5, which indicates the waveform
is able to reach 100 kHz with a Vpp around 3.5 V under 10 V
power supply.
The result performance shows the MIS structure has higher
capability on providing better performance in power
conversion. HEMT-based sawtooth generator in Ref. [1]
generates around 0.75 V Vpp because of the limited gate
voltage swing of the E-mode Schottky-gate HEMT. Due to
higher gate swing of MIS-HEMTs in this work, the sawtooth
generator allows higher output Vpp (3.5 V) as expected.
Besides, given higher gate swing, level shifter is not
necessary to add in the ICs for lowering voltage levels as in
Ref. [1], which proves MIS-HEMT’s ability of providing
more compact solutions on power conversion. The rising and
falling edges are sharp to allow the IC to work on higher
frequency. The good linearity of sawtooth signal enables
further implementation on duty cycle control in PWM.
In addition, the gap between the simulation and experiment
is mainly due to the variation of the average charging or
discharging current Ic, which could be optimized by
increasing the W/L ratio of device S5 (shown in Fig. 3) for
larger tail current [8]. It is worth noticing that variation on the
Ic may also occur because of charge trapping within devices,
which could lead a threshold voltage shift and a significant
nonlinearity on the comparator output resistance [9-10].
Better fabrication technique might address this issue [11].
Ic
f = (2)
CsawVHB
8 Simulated
Measured
7
Vsaw (V)

R1 6
VTL = VoL
R1 + RFB 5
4
R1
VHB = V pp = (VoH − VoL ) (1) 3
R1 + RFB 50 60 70 80 90 100
Time t (μs)
The amount of hysteresis is VHB, which is the same as the
Fig. 5. Measured (line with symbols) and simulated (red line)
the peak-to-peak voltage (Vpp) of the sawtooth waveform. output sawtooth signal (Vdd=10V)

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 IV. Conclusion
A GaN-based sawtooth generator ICs in full AlGaN/GaN
MIS-HEMTs configuration has been successfully evaluated
from both experiments and simulations. The proposed GaN
ICs features well on generating sawtooth signal with high
peak-to-peak voltage on 100 kHz under 10 V power supply
at room temperature. The result shows the larger gate swing
of MIS structure do improve the ICs performance by
outputing high Vpp (3.5 V), while conventional HEMT-based
devices generate relatively lower output Vpp (0.75 V in Ref.
[1]) because of the limited gate voltage swing of the E-mode
Schottky-gate HEMT. Proved by well performance of the
designed ICs, MIS-HEMTs have the feasibility on providing
compact solutions on power conversion, such like abnegating
level shifters which is commonly used in HEMT-based ICs [1]
[3]. To the future work, the temperature characteristics will
be tested to verify the thermal limit of the proposed integrated
ICs, and the accurate dynamic model for high temperature
operation will be introduced and optimized to fit
experimental results. Relative investigations have been
introduced in Ref. [12]. In conclusion, the results demonstrate
the feasibility of using the designed circuit (with full
AlGaN/GaN MIS-HEMTs configuration) on power
converter applications.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of the Jiangsu
Higher Education Institutions of China(18KJB470023), the Key Program
Special Fund in XJTLU (KSF-A-05) (KSF-A-12) and the Suzhou Science
and Technology program (SYG201728).
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