Active Gate Driver and Management of the Switching Speed of GaN Transistors during Turn-On and Turn-Off
, Hassan Maher 2 and Bruno Allard 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript (electronics-1021376), Active gate driver and management of the switching speed of GaN transistors during turn-on and turn-off, shows interesting results of switching speed of GaN transistors for active gate driver and management. Authors present quite comprehensive analysis electrically. One minor comment would like to provide here is that -
Authors should add the experimental section after introduction to further detail of experimental setting. For example, the equipment and component in Fig. 4 need to clarify in detail. Where to get the commercial GaN transistor in this manuscript. What is the type of the commercial signal control generator in detail. Those should need to add in the manuscript for potential readers and researchers reproductivity and repeatability.
Due to the above comments, this referee would like to put the manuscript status as "Minor Revision" in the current phase.
Author Response
Comments from Reviewer 1 :
- Comment : One minor comment would like to provide here is that : Authors should add the experimental section after introduction to further detail of experimental setting. For example, the equipment and component in Fig. 4 need to clarify in detail. Where to get the commercial GaN transistor in this manuscript. What is the type of the commercial signal control generator in detail. Those should need to add in the manuscript for potential readers and researchers reproductivity and repeatability.
Due to the above comments, this referee would like to put the manuscript status as "Minor Revision" in the current phase.
Response : The experimental elements requested have been added in section 4 (Experimental results of open active gate voltage control). In figure 4, I mentioned that the GaN component used is the GS66508P from the manufacturer GaN Systems and the drivers used are the SI8261 ABC from Silabs .
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
(1) There are two dots at the end of the paragraph in the abstract.
(2) In the Introduction, reference is made to Section II. Section III etc. Unfortunately, these are not in the article. There are Section 1, Section 2, etc.
(3) In the text of the article, the variables are written in a simple font, but in the formulas it is a cursive font (e.g. Cgd).. I think that it is necessary to take the same rules in the spelling of the variables
(4) I think it is necessary to improve the quality of the photo in Figure 4.
(5) Line 114 - is a sentence: “Figure. 6 compares the results”. I believe there should be no dot after the word "Figure".
(6) Line: 131and 152 there is: „Rg=Rs=3 Ω”. I think the authors meant these spelled variables with an index. This should be changed because there are no variables in the article.
(7) Line: 156: - is invalid text: „Table I”. In article is only: „Table 1”.
(8) The comment described in comment (6) also applies to other variables, e.g. Vdc (line 183) and Ls.
(9) The tables are not made in the format imposed by MDPI (Electronics).
(10) In Reference, no. 14 and no. 22 have square brackets at the beginning of the line. Please explain it.
(11) Please clearly mark in the text what are the differences between the quoted article [22] and the presented one.
(12) In summary, the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed solution should be mentioned. Also please supplement the article with further options for modification/extension of the proposed solution.
(13) I think it should clearly be written at the end of the article (Publisher’s Note:) who is responsible for what.
Author Response
Dear Ms. Sirius, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled Active gate driver and management of the switching speed of GaN transistors during turn-on and turn-off to MDPI journal. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing valuable feedbacks on the manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 2 :
- Comment 1 : There are two dots at the end of the paragraph in the abstract.
Response : The extra dots has been deleted.
- Comment 2 : In the Introduction, reference is made to Section II. Section III etc. Unfortunately, these are not in the article. There are Section 1, Section 2, etc.
Response : These numbering errors have been modified.
- Comment 3 : In the text of the article, the variables are written in a simple font, but in the formulas it is a cursive font (e.g. Cgd).. I think that it is necessary to take the same rules in the spelling of the variables
Response : The font were harmonized.
- Comment 4 : I think it is necessary to improve the quality of the photo in Figure 4.
Response : The figure has been changed. The new one has better quality.
- Comment 5 : Line 114 - is a sentence: “Figure. 6 compares the results”. I believe there should be no dot after the word "Figure".
Response : The dot has been deleted.
- Comment 6 : Line: 131and 152 there is: „Rg=Rs=3 Ω”. I think the authors meant these spelled variables with an index. This should be changed because there are no variables in the article.
Response : The variables have been rewritten with the indices. The RS variable has been removed.
- Comment 7 : 156: - is invalid text: „Table I”. In article is only: „Table 1”.
Response : The error have been modified.
- Comment 8 : The comment described in comment (6) also applies to other variables, e.g. Vdc (line 183) and Ls.
Response : While doing the review, I did not find either the Vdc variable and the LS variable on line 183. Reason why I did not make any change for this point.
- Comment 9 : The tables are not made in the format imposed by MDPI (Electronics).
Response : changes has been made
- Comment 10 : In Reference, no. 14 and no. 22 have square brackets at the beginning of the line. Please explain it.
Response : It was a mistake, the brackets were removed
- Comment 11 : Please clearly mark in the text what are the differences between the quoted article [22] and the presented one.
Response : The paper [22] only treats the open loop so this paper summarizes open loop issue as well as the closed loop issues. In addition to that, this paper shows that the use of discrete components does not make it possible to fully resolve the problem of high switching speeds of GaN transistors due to their limited switching speed. It was one thing to prove that limit. A text has been added in the abstract and at the end of the introduction to show the difference with paper [22].
- Comment 12 : In summary, the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed solution should be mentioned. Also please supplement the article with further options for modification/extension of the proposed solution.
Response : the requested elements were mentioned in the conclusion and the introduction (line 46 to line 49) (section 6)
- Comment 13 : I think it should clearly be written at the end of the article (Publisher’s Note:) who is responsible for what
Response : I did not understand this comment. The issue will be solved with the Editor’s help
In addition to the above comments, spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have not clearly indicated the specific contributions of their work. A limited description of the existing literature has been presented. However, the points of distinction between this work and the state-of-the-art are unclear.
Section numbering is inconsistent, which causes confusion. Example, Experimental results - marked as section 6 and then conclusions marked as 5.
In the introduction section, the authors mentioned - "In this paper, an analysis of other active gate drive techniques for GaN power transistors are discussed. The mathematical analysis for switching speeds is discussed in Section II. Section III details a proposal of open-loop active gate voltage control (AGVC) technique. By addressing the issues in open-loop approach, a new closed-loop control technique is introduced in Section IV. Finally, Section V concludes with summarizing the findings." This narrative does not match with the overall paper. The authors will need to correct this to ensure correspondence with the overall write-up.
Fig. 4 is not of publication quality and must be changed or removed.
The quality of written English should be improved.
Author Response
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled Active gate driver and management of the switching speed of GaN transistors during turn-on and turn-off to MDPI journal. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing valuable feedbacks on the manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 3 :
- Comment 1 : The authors have not clearly indicated the specific contributions of their work. A limited description of the existing literature has been presented. However, the points of distinction between this work and the state-of-the-art are unclear.
Response : Sentences explaining the contribution of this paper have been added in the abstract (line 21 to line 23) and in the introduction (line 46 to line 49).
introduction (line 46 to line 49) : ‘For all these solutions proposed in the literature, discrete components and complex circuits are used to solve the issue of high switching speeds of GaN transistors. Simples closed loop analyses were carried out in using discrete components to evaluate potential limits with respect to the management of switching speeds.’
- Comment 2 : Section numbering is inconsistent, which causes confusion. Example, Experimental results - marked as section 6 and then conclusions marked as 5.
Response : These errors have been modified.
- Comment 3 : 4 is not of publication quality and must be changed or removed.
Response : The figure has been changed. The new one has better quality.
In addition to the above comments, spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
1)In the introduction, the section is named with roman numerals while they refer to normal (arab) numbers only.
2) Every commercial component listed along the paper should have the citation to the respective online-available datasheet.
1)I just suggest improving the quality of all the figures in the paper figure (in particulate figures 1 and 4 are very blurry).
2)It is not clear the innovative/scientific aspect of the paper. Just because of the employment of GaN instead of Si ?
3)Please emphasize more the innovative aspects of this paper compared to a laboratory report.
4) A precise reference to the international standards for EMC tests is needed. Also the respective comparison with the state of the art. Reference on the EMC test and state-of-art from MDPI and IEEE papers on the same topic would be appreciable.
Author Response
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled Active gate driver and management of the switching speed of GaN transistors during turn-on and turn-off to MDPI journal. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing valuable feedbacks on the manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 4 :
- Comment 1 : Every commercial component listed along the paper should have the citation to the respective online-available datasheet.
Response : changed has been made.
- Comment 2 : I just suggest improving the quality of all the figures in the paper figure (in particulate figures 1 and 4 are very blurry).
Response : Figures have been changed or improved.
- Comment 3 : It is not clear the innovative/scientific aspect of the paper. Just because of the employment of GaN instead of Si ?
Response : Sentences explaining the contribution of this paper have been added in the abstract (line 21 to line 23) and in the introduction (line 46 to line 49).
introduction (line 46 to line 49) : ‘For all these solutions proposed in the literature, discrete components and complex circuits are used to solve the issue of high switching speeds of GaN transistors. Simples closed loop analyses were carried out in using discrete components to evaluate potential limits with respect to the management of switching speeds.’
- Comment 4 : Please emphasize more the innovative aspects of this paper compared to a laboratory report.
Response : Sentences explaining the contribution of this paper have been added in the abstract (line 21 to line 23) and in the introduction (line 46 to line 49).
introduction (line 46 to line 49) : ‘For all these solutions proposed in the literature, discrete components and complex circuits are used to solve the issue of high switching speeds of GaN transistors. Simples closed loop analyses were carried out in using discrete components to evaluate potential limits with respect to the management of switching speeds.’
In addition to the above comments, spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The authors have taken care of the points I mentioned in the previous cycle of review.
Author Response
Dear Ms. Sirius, Thank you for giving me the opportunity to submit a revised draft of my manuscript titled Active gate driver and management of the switching speed of GaN transistors during turn-on and turn-off to MDPI journal. We appreciate the time and effort that you and the reviewers have dedicated to providing valuable feedbacks on the manuscript. We are grateful to the reviewers for their insightful comments. We have been able to incorporate changes to reflect most of the suggestions provided by the reviewers. We have highlighted the changes within the manuscript. Here is a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments and concerns.
Comments from Reviewer 3 :
- Comment : Thank you for submitting a revised version of your manuscript. After considering all the reviewers' comments and your responses, I suggest a minor revision for your paper.
In particular, try to emphasize even more the main contribution of your work. The added lines would definetively help in clarifying this; however, it is a key aspecto to emphasize why the proposed closed loop analysis is an incremental contribution in this particular field.
Response : T the requested elements were mentioned the introduction (line 49 to line 54) (section 6).
introduction (line 49 to line 54) : « In all those GaN transistor-based solutions, discrete components and complex circuits were used to solve the issue of high-speed switches. In this paper, we are proposing a less complex closed-loop to manage potential limits of switching speed. The evaluation of this discrete component-based circuit can be used to determine the response time, switching speed and the losses. Further, we determined the limitations of AGVC technique built using discrete component to control switching speed of a GaN HEMT. »
- Comment : Take this opportunity to fix some minor mistakes and double check possible typos and grammar errors.
Response : the gramma errors have been changed. More correct English is used.
- Comment : In regards, reviewer 2, comment 13 about the authors' contribution, please, add a description of the authors' contribution on the paper, as it was stated in the template of this journal:
Author Contributions: For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. The following statements should be used “Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.” Please turn to the CRediT taxonomy for the term explanation. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.
Response : the contribution of the authors is added from the line 324
In addition to the above comments, spelling and grammatical errors pointed out by the reviewers have been corrected.
