Design Considerations for Integrated, High-Voltage DC-DC Converters

This paper presents two design considerations for integrated high-voltage DC-DC converters in automobile and industrial applications. The proposed solutions include (i) a quasi soft-start technique using over-current protection (OCP) circuits and limited duty cycle control and (ii) a technique to drive a floating load-side switch that suppresses the effect of bond-wire bouncing on its gate-source voltage. The first technique avoids the conventional, overhead start-up circuits and significantly reduces the converter startup time. The second technique gains importance primarily from device reliability viewpoint in high-voltage (HV) conditions. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques has been verified with simulations at the transistor level using a 110-nm BCD technology.