Jong-hoon Kim, a Ph.D. student in POSTECH's Graduate School of Semiconductor Technology, and the Power Management and Integrated Circuit Systems Design Laboratory (PICTUS), led by Electrical Engineering Professor Se-woon Shin, received an Outstanding Paper Award at the Korean Institute of Power Electronics' 2025 Fall Conference for “A Gate Driver for Gallium Nitride Power Semiconductors with Integrated Overcurrent and Overvoltage Protection.”

The paper proposed a gate-driver design for fast, highly reliable power conversion using wide-bandgap compound semiconductors, including gallium nitride (GaN).

The GaN-specific driver used a high-speed gate-driver IC to operate at up to 13.56 MHz, achieved overcurrent protection in 120 ns, and reduced peak gate voltage by 45%.

The technology is expected to support smaller and more reliable systems in home appliances, electric vehicles, clean energy, and other applications.