Ph.D. student Jonghoon Kim from POSTECH’s Semiconductor Graduate School and Professor Seun Shin’s Power Management and Integrated Circuit Systems Design Laboratory (PICTUS) received the Best Paper Award at the 2025 Fall Conference of the Power Electronics Society of Korea. Their paper, titled “Gate Drive Circuit for GaN Power Semiconductors with Built-in Overcurrent and Overvoltage Protection”, was recognized for its contribution to the field.

The paper proposes a gate drive circuit design for high-speed and highly reliable power conversion using wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor materials, including gallium nitride (GaN). The proposed GaN-specific gate drive circuit uses a high-speed gate drive IC, achieving operation up to 13.56 MHz, with an overcurrent protection time of 120 ns and a 45% reduction in gate voltage peaks. This innovation is expected to contribute to the miniaturization and improved reliability of devices in various applications such as consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and clean energy systems.