A 14-W 94%-Efficient Hybrid DC-DC Converter with Advanced Bootstrap Gate Drivers for Smart Home LED Applications

This paper presents a 40V-to-8V hybrid DC-DC converter based on 5-to-1 Dickson converter. The converter can efficiently support wide and flexible output voltage ranges up to the input voltage, suitable for Smart Home LED driver applications. The GaN-based hybrid DC-DC converter prototype is experimentally verified with commercial LED lamp, achieving peak efficiency of 94% while providing ∼1,2A at wide output range from 4V to 28V. A modified bootstrap driver circuit is proposed to significantly reduce the number of gate drivers by ∼57%, leading to a substantial decrease of circuit size and cost. Measurement results show that 94% peak efficiency is achieved for the converter using the proposed bootstrap circuit.