may occur during the time between the turn-off of the high-side switch and the turn-on of the low-side switch, when the body diode of the low-side MOSFET conducts the output current. This time, known as the non-overlap time, prevents "shoot-through", a condition in which both switches are simultaneously turned on. The onset of shoot-through generates severe power loss and heat. Proper selection of non-overlap time must balance the risk of shoot-through with the increased power loss caused by conduction of the body diode. Many MOSFET based buck converters also include a diode to aid the lower MOSFET body diode with conduction during the non-overlap time. When a diode is used exclusively for the lower switch, diode forward turn-on time can reduce efficiency and lead to voltage overshoot. Power loss on the body diode is also proportional to switching frequency and is where: VF is the forward voltage of the body diode, and tno is the selected non-overlap time. Finally, power losses occur as a result of the power required to turn the switches on and off. For MOSFET switches, these losses are dominated by the energy required to charge and discharge the capacitance of the MOSFET gate between the threshold voltage and the selected gate voltage. These switch transition losses occur primarily in the gate driver, and can be minimized by selecting MOSFETs with low gate charge, by driving the MOSFET gate to a lower voltage (at the cost of increased MOSFET conduction losses), or by operating at a lower frequency. where: QG is the gate charge of the selected MOSFET, and VGS is the peak gate-source voltage. For N-MOSFETs, the high-side switch must be driven to a higher voltage than Vi. To achieve this, MOSFET gate drivers typically feed the MOSFET output voltage back into the gate driver. The gate driver then adds its own supply voltage to the MOSFET output voltage when driving the high-side MOSFETs to achieve a VGS equal to the gate driver supply voltage. Because the low-side VGS is the gate driver supply voltage, this results in very similar VGS values for high-side and low-side MOSFETs. A complete design for a buck converter includes a tradeoff analysis of the various power losses. Designers balance these losses according to the expected uses of the finished design. A converter expected to have a low switching frequency does not require switches with low gate transition losses; a converter