EPC9130: 12V @ 50A, 36 ~ 60V in, 5-Phase Buck

The EPC9130 development board is a 500 kHz switching frequency, 48 V nominal input voltage, 60 A maximum output current, 5-phase intermediate bus converter (IBC) with onboard microcontroller and gate drives, featuring the 100 V EPC2045 (EPC2204 is the recommended replacement) enhancement mode (eGaN) field effect transistor (FET). The purpose of this development board is to provide a regulated 12 V power supply for high performance applications showcasing the superior performance of the EPC2045 (EPC2204 is the recommended replacement) eGaN FET.

The EPC9130 development board has five phases of two EPC2045 (EPC2204 is the recommended replacement) eGaN FETs in a half bridge configuration using a uPI semiconductor up1966A gate driver with supply and bypass capacitors. The PWM signals to the gate drivers are fed by an onboard dsPIC33 microcontroller from Microchip. The output voltage is regulated to 12 V. The board contains all critical components and layout for optimal switching performance. There are also various probe points to facilitate simple waveform measurement and efficiency calculation.

A complete block diagram of the circuit is given in Figure 1. The converter uses five interleaved half-bridges built from EPC2045 (EPC2204 is the recommended replacement) as power switches, and the uPI1966A as the gate driver. Basic voltage mode control of output is done with the microcontroller. Current sharing among the phases, under-voltage lockout as well as overcurrent, over-voltage, and over temperature protection is available. To allow more flexible operation for this evaluation board, only current sharing and under-voltage lockout are implemented for this EPC9130 demo board. GaN