How2AppNote 020 How to Design a Bi-Directional 1/16th Brick 48 V-12 V Converter Using Monolithic GaN ePower™ Stage

PublishTime：2021-01-18

Brick DC-DC converters are widely used in data center, telecommunication and automotive applications, converting a nominal 48 V bus to (or from) a nominal 12 V bus. Advances in GaN integrated circuit (IC) technology have enabled the integration of the half bridge and gate drivers, resulting in a single chip solution that simplifies layout, minimizes area, and reduces cost.
This application note discusses the design of a digitally controlled bi-directional 1/16ᵗʰ brick converter using the integrated GaN power stage for 48 V-to-12 V application, with up to 300 W output power, and peak efficiency of 95%.
The standard dimension of the 1/16ᵗʰ brick converter is 33 x 22.9 mm (1.3 x 0.9 inch). The height limit for this design is set to 10 mm (0.4 inch).
Monolithic GaN ePower™ stage:
The monolithic integration of GaN FETs and gate drivers offers improved performance and simplified board layout. It also reduces parasitic inductance and capacitances, and related losses.
Figure 1 (a) shows a simplified block diagram of the EPC2152 GaN ePower™ Stage [1]. The main power FETs are controlled by the integrated gate drivers. The IC also includes input buffers that accept logic levels from 3.3 V to 5 V. Other standard features are also included, such as power-on-reset (POR) and under-voltage-lockout (UVLO) functions, a high voltage signal level-shifter and a synchronous bootstrap FET [2]. A photo of the monolithic GaN power stage is shown in Figure 1 (b). Both power GaN FETs are 80 V rated, with 10 mΩ on-resistance.
Design of the Bi-directional DC-DC converter:
One of the key challenges in designing a high power 1/16ᵗʰ brick is the limited space. The integrated EPC2152 requires an area of just 18 mm2, leaving room for adequate decoupling capacitors that help achieve high efficiency.
A simplified schematic of the EPC9151 bi-directional capable 1/16ᵗʰ brick DC-DC converter is shown in Figure 2. It includes a two-phase synchronous buck power stage, a digital controller, current sensors and housekeeping power supply. A two-phase approach is selected so that the peak current requirement is reduced, and smaller magnetics can be used.

Brand of Product：	EPC
Part#：	EPC2152 More Part#
Product Category：	Converter 、 Brick DC-DC converters More
Application：	More
Data Type：	Application note & Design Guide More
Safety & Environment Standards：	More
Operating Temperature：	Please see the document for details
Qualification Grade：	More
Qualification Approval：	More
Package：
Language：	English Chinese Chinese and English Japanese
Date of Creation：	2020/12/16
Version Number：
Data Encoding：	020
Data Size：	1.3 MB

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