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PNP/NPN fet drive for hi-side Buck converter fet at 200khz

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treez

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Hello,
Can you confirm that PNP/NPN type FET drives are unsuitable for 200khz operation?
Its 40W out, and 100vin and 80vout.
The PNP/NPN is pulsing into a pulse transformer with a DC restore capacitor and diode on the secondary.
 

please upload schematic
don't forget the part No.
 
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We are using the diodes.com BJT's due to their high hfe at high Ic. -But even though these are the best and fastest, (and are well known for this pnp/npn fet drive useage) we still don't think they are good for 200khz?...because no BJTs are suitable for that.?
 

Are you saying you are making a 40 watt FET driver?
 
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Depends how you drive them we have pnp/npn totem poles running at 400kHz 2 amp peak out, if the drive is insufficient there will always be problems, there are mosfet based FET dirver chips that will do this easily at 200kHz at 4 amps out with a small heatsink glued on top.
 
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thanks, this ltspice sim is our setup, (ot at least its representative) unfortunately we cannot use chips as the temperature (170c ambient) is too hot.
 

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  • Buck.txt
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watch out for leakage currents at high temp (Icbo) these can be large enough to upset things, turn xtors on, etc.
 
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What are the part numbers for the BJTs? After a bit of browsing I can't find any discrete ones from diodes rated for 170C. Of the few I can find from other manufacturers, none of them seem to spec performance at the upper end of the temperature range.

Too bad nobody seems to make small signal SiC PNP/NPN BJTs.
 
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I've done some bipolar power MOSFET drivers (back in the
'80s and '90s, before HV CMOS / BCDMOS was suitably
robust for my end markets). Took a lot of care to stay out
of saturation and meet the ~50nS prop delays, loaded.
Those could run out past 1MHz but really the frequency
is less the problem, than the short-pulse limit - where do
you start to see runt pulses which could drive the FETs
badly enough to damage? What then is your min / max
duty cycle position, and does this leave margin in the
design's control range vs VIN, IOUT, etc.?

Now doing this with discretes, you'd care a lot about the
saturation behavior and this tends to be poorly spec'd
(if at all) - let alone modeled for you to play with bias
and clamping accurately enough to ensure the design
works, and works indefinitely.

Never seen a SiC PNP. Have seen "super junction
transistors" from GeneSiC which sure do look like an
NPN, although they purport to be majority-carrier-
only. Fast, tough (good avalanche rating, but you
do not care, here), come in not-huge (but not that
petite) currents on up to tens of amps. Some at
Digi-Key and other distributors.

My first bipolar MOSFET driver in fact used an all-NPN
totem pole, with PNPs playing only supporting roles -
a traditional TTL phase splitter, basically - and if you
can stand the waste heat in the pullup resistor the
sky's about the limit for implementing a discrete SJT
based gate-drive (or for that matter, power train).
 
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