Chattering phenomenon in high-side gate driver circuits with degraded capacitors

Switching power conversion circuits are of great importance within a wide variety of applications, including automotive, wearable device, and so on. Their widespread use is largely due to their high efficiency and small size. However, when such circuits are subject to capacitor degradation, undesired turbulence and a degradation in the overall performance of the converter circuit can be observed. This paper investigates the effect of capacitor degradation on the occurrence of chattering in high-side gate driver circuits within power conversion systems. We introduce a simple mathematical model of a high-side gate driver circuit, which incorporates a hysteresis characteristic as a result of the under-voltage lockout (UVLO) function. We analytically derived the conditions in which chattering events occur and how the number of switching events changes. These analytical expressions were achieved by analyzing the period of the return map and identifying the thresholds that can be used to characterize the different behaviors that the system exhibits. In this work, we obtain a relationship between capacitor degradation and the chattering events.