High Voltage A-synchronous Buck Converter (100V -> 28V)

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gdylp2004
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Hi guys,

I'm new in here and hope I could get some advices.

I am designing a 100V-28V DC-DC Buck converter (as per tittle) and has successfully tested on breadboard.

The problem is when I've transferred everything to the stripboard, the circuit does not work. This is confusing to me because isn't connection made on the stripboard should perform better since parasitic components are lesser?

From my schematic attached, you can see that the 12V Vcc for the 2 IC chips (IR2117 & TC4420EPA) are powered by 2 different auxillary supplies at different times. What I've done is basically construct 2 linear series reg. (one from the 100V V+ and other from the 28V Vout) as could be seen. My idea is, during start-up, Vcc is supplied via the 100V series linear reg for a very short time and once Vout achieved 28V, the supply of Vcc is then transferred and will be drawn from the 28V Vout instead. This should be easily understood by most experts here.

Weird thing is everything worked out perfectly on breadboard but not on stripboard. WHY?

Upon troubleshooting, I've found no zero short circuit between paths, all zener diodes and NPN transistors are also working fine. BUt when I do an o-scope on the base of the NPN transistor (100V linear series reg.), I've realized that the base voltage (or the zener voltage) did not have the chance to climb till 12V. In theory, as long as V+ > 12V, the 12V zener will hold at this voltage even if we ramp more than 12V to V+.

In the o-scope graph attached, (V+ = 30V), it should already have a high enough voltage to ramp Vb > 12V? But the waveform on oscope doesn't seems to be the case (see VB_30.jpg attachment).

The waveform tells me that Vb attempts to rise but dropped to zero immediately after ~3.2V like that.

WHY? This could be the very reason why my circuit can't work because the IC doesn't have a 12V Vdd to start with.

Attached are my schematic, stripboard layout and the o-scope readings.

Could anyone help? Thank you in advance.
 
Attachments
  • LTspice schematic of a buck converter with an IR2117 gate driver, TC4420 buffer, IRFB5620 MOSFET, STPS3150 Schottky diode, and two 2N3439 linear regulator stages fed from V+ and Vout.
    full_sch.jpg
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  • Stripboard layout diagram of a buck converter with gate driver ICs IR2117 and TC4420EPA, MOSFET nMOS IRFB5620PbF, Schottky diode STPS3150RL, inductor 470uH, bypass capacitors, and zener-regulated supply rails labelled 12V and 13V.
    sch_grid.jpg
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  • Oscilloscope screen, Tektronix TDS 340A, showing a green trace with a periodic sawtooth-like waveform on channel 1 and a flat line near the bottom on channel 2.
    VB_30.jpg
    50.5 KB · Views: 667
Some additional photos of the real thing.
 
Attachments
  • Photo of a hand-built power converter on a black perforated prototype board with two metal-can transistors, IC sockets, a large electrolytic capacitor marked 100V, a toroidal copper inductor and screw terminal blocks.
    full_front.jpg
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  • Back side of a perforated copper stripboard with solder joints bridging the copper strips in rows, forming a hand-soldered circuit layout.
    full_back.jpg
    70.1 KB · Views: 622