GAN-BASED POINT-OF-LOAD CONVERTERS FOR DATA CENTER APPLICATIONS

The growth of the information technology sector has increased demand for high-density, high-efficiency point-of-load (POL) converters. As industry continues to demand an increase in server processing power, high-current operation presents challenges to designing high-efficiency POL converters. Increased conduction and overlap losses induce significant power losses in high-power modes. The introduction of Gallium-Nitride (GaN) switching devices and the implementation of zero-current-switching (ZCS) topologies for POL applications have the potential to improve converter efficiency while maintaining or surpassing the industrial power density standard. This thesis addresses the challenges presented by high-current operation by demonstrating an accurate power loss model of the quasi-resonant zero-current-switching (QR-ZCS) buck converter and presents a comparison between the synchronous buck and QR-ZCS buck in a 5-1.8 V POL application.