A Study on Shoot-Through Reduction of DC-DC Converter Pre-Driver using Starving Resistor

This research studies the effect of a starving resistor in various pre-driver schemes for shoot-through loss reduction in the buffer of an integrated DC-DC converter and explores how the efficiency is affected. The starving resistor (Bidirectional delay element) reduces the short circuit current of an inverter by developing time skewed gate driving signals for the driven stage NMOS and PMOS inside a buffer. The starving resistor scheme enhances the efficiency if it is inside the buffer of a switch, but is not as efficient if it is inside the buffer of an active diode. The efficiency of the buffer can be further enhanced by adding delay generator schemes within a buffer. Results are validated via extensive SPICE simulations.