Automatic And Fail-Safe Biasing Of GaN Transistors

GaN HEMT transistors require a negative voltage for the gate and a positive voltage for the drain. Since they are depletion mode devices, it is critical to supply a negative voltage to the gate before any positive voltage is applied to the drain, otherwise the transistor will draw its maximum possible drain current from the supply which is likely to lead to excessive thermal dissipation and the device burning out. For these reasons Integra Technologies has developed a fully automatic and fail-safe bias circuit for its GaN transistors that only requires a single positive voltage power supply. Download this application note for more information on this technique for automatic and fail-safe biasing of GaN transistors.