A Class of GaN-Based, Radiation-Hardened Power Electronics for Jovian Environments

Presented here is the development of a class of isolated and non-isolated power converters based on a radiation-hardened synchronous buck controller and GaN HEMT devices. The efficiency and radiation benefits enabled through the use GaN HEMTs in spaceflight conversion applications and the barriers to their use are discussed, along with a set of gate drive circuitry designed to mitigate overshoot and protect the device. Enabled by these technologies, the paper then presents three examples of GaN-based converters in flight applications and compares their merits to the current state of the art. This work represents a dramatic increase in efficiency and power density over the existing state of the art in power conversion for high-radiation environments, and will be used to provide high performance spacecraft systems.