Coreless printed circuit board (PCB) transformers for power MOSFET/IGBT gate drive circuits

Gate drive circuits for modern power electronic switches, such as MOSFET an d insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT), often require electrical isolat ion. This paper describes the modeling and experimental results of some cor eless printed circuit board (PCB)-based transformers that can be used for M OSFET and IGBT devices at high-frequency (500 kHz to 2 MHz) operation. PCB- based transformers do not require the manual winding procedure and thus sim plify the manufacturing process of transformer-isolated gate drive circuits . With no core loss, coreless transformers are found to have favorable char acteristics at high-frequency operations. This project demonstrates an impo rtant point that the size of the magnetic core can approach zero and become zero when the frequency is sufficiently high.