GaN Talk a blog dedicated to crushing silicon
Term: 窒化ガリウム
22 post(s) found

Oct 25, 2021

How to Design a 12V-to-60V Boost Converter with Low Temperature Rise Using eGaN FETs

Jianglin Zhu, Senior Applications Engineer

Modern displays, such as laptops and PC monitors, typically require a low power boost converter. In this application, the screen intensity is low to moderate and the converter is operated at light load most of the time, so the light-load efficiency is very important. The low switching loss of eGaN FETs can help address this challenge. This GaN Talk will examine the design of a 12 V to 60 V, 50 W DC/DC power module with low temperature rise using eGaN FETs in the simple and low-cost synchronous boost topology.

Jul 29, 2021

High-Quality, Low-Cost Audio Achieved with GaN

Renee Yawger, Director of Marketing

Until recently, to achieve high-quality sound from an audio amplifier cost thousands of dollars and relied on a large, heavy, power-hungry class-A amplifier. Now, the advent of gallium nitride FETs and ICs is ushering the age of high quality, lower cost class-D audio amplifiers. 

Distortion Performance Issues Lowered with GaN

Historically, meeting the required distortion performance targets (THD+N, TIM and IM) for high-quality audio, class-D amplifiers had to resort to incorporating large amounts of feedback circuitry to compensate for poor open-loop performance. The source of this distortion was the silicon power MOSFET.

May 10, 2021

Intelligent Power Amplifier Module based on GaN FETs

EPC Guest Blogger,

Guest GaN Talk Blog by: Pavel Gurev, Sinftech Rus LLC

This article originally appeared in Bodo’s Power Systems April 2021

In the past few years, gallium-nitride (GaN) FETs have become more widespread in power electronics. Due to their outstanding characteristics, GaN FETs play an increasingly important role in miniaturization of the switching converters with very high-power densities exceeding 100 W / cm3 and more. The efficiency of converters based on GaN transistors can reach 99.5%. Due to the extension of the conversion frequency towards the MHz range, the magnetic components (chokes, transformers) also decrease in size significantly. However, designers face numerous challenges in implementing practical GaN transistor designs. The best family members are presented in wafer-level chip-scale package; the drivers are also quite miniature.

Mar 22, 2021

eToF™ Laser Driver ICs for Advanced Autonomy Lidar

John Glaser , Ph.D., Director of Applications

Co-written by Steve Colino

Laser drivers for light distancing and ranging (lidar) are used in a pulsed-power mode. What are the basic requirements for these laser drivers?

A new family of integrated laser driver ICs meets all these requirements.  The first release, the EPC21601 laser driver IC, integrates a 40 V, 10 A FET with integrated gate driver and 3.3 V logic level input in a single chip for time-of-flight (ToF) lidar systems used in robotics, surveillance systems, drones, autonomous cars, and vacuum cleaners. This chip offers frequency capability up to 200 MHz in a low inductance, economical, 1 mm x 1.5 mm BGA package.

Mar 03, 2021

Why GaN for DC-DC Space Designs

David Reusch, Ph.D., Principal Scientist, VPT

Power electronics engineers are constantly working towards designs with higher efficiency and higher power density while maintaining high reliability and minimizing cost. Advances in design techniques and improved component technologies enable engineers to consistently achieve these goals. Power semiconductors are at the heart of these designs and their improvements are vital to better performance. In this EPC space blog, we will demonstrate how GaN power semiconductors allow for innovation in the harsh radiation environments of space applications.

GaN power semiconductors offer designers in the high reliability market a sudden and significant improvement in electrical performance over their silicon power MOSFET predecessors. Table 1 compares radiation hardened GaN and Si power semiconductor device characteristics important for circuit designers to increase efficiency and power density in their converter.

Feb 09, 2021

How GaN is Revolutionizing Motor Drive Applications

Marco Palma, Director of Motor Drives Systems and Applications

Rethinking the Ordinary and Overcoming Mental Biases

Motor drive applications span several markets: industrial, appliance, and automotive. A commonality that occurs regardless of market is that when a new technology is proposed, it faces resistance to its adoption; after all, it is human nature to stick with what is known and resist change.

Jan 15, 2021

Reduce Audible Noise in Motor Drive Designs Using eGaN FETs and ICs

Renee Yawger, Director of Marketing

Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are popular and finding increasing application in robotics, e-mobility, and drones. Such applications have special requirements such as lightweight, small size, low torque ripple, low audible noise, and extreme precision control.  To address these needs, the inverters powering the motors need to operate at higher frequency but require advanced techniques to reduce the resultant higher power loss. Enhancement-mode gallium nitride (eGaN ®) transistors and integrated circuits offer the ability to operate at much higher frequencies without incurring significant losses. 

Sep 22, 2020

New 100 V eGaN Devices Increase Benchmark Performance Over the Aging Silicon Power MOSFET

Alex Lidow, Ph.D., CEO and Co-founder

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) is increasing the performance distance between the aging silicon power MOSFET and eGaN transistors with 100 V ratings.  The new fifth-generation “plus” devices have about 20% lower RDS(on) and increased DC ratings compared with the prior fifth-generation products.  This performance boost comes from the addition of a thick metal layer and a conversion from solder balls to solder bars.

Jun 28, 2020

Why GaN in Space?

Alex Lidow, Ph.D., CEO and Co-founder

Packaged SEE Immune and Radiation Hardened enhancement mode gallium nitride (eGaN) devices offer dramatically improved performance over the aging Rad Hard silicon MOSFET, enabling a new generation of power converters in space operating at higher frequencies, higher efficiencies, and greater power densities than ever achievable before.

Mar 16, 2020

ePower™ Stage – Redefining Power Conversion

Renee Yawger, Director of Marketing

Beyond just performance and cost improvement, the most significant opportunity for GaN technology to impact the power conversion market comes from its intrinsic ability to integrate multiple devices on the same substrate. GaN technology, as opposed to standard silicon IC technology, allows designers to implement monolithic power systems on a single chip in a more straightforward and cost-effective way.

Today, the most common building block used in power conversion is the half bridge. In 2014, EPC introduced a family of integrated half-bridge devices which became the starting point for the journey towards a power system-on-a-chip. This trend was expanded with the introduction of the EPC2107 and EPC2108, which integrated half bridges with integrated synchronous bootstrap. In 2018 we further continued the integration path with the introduction of eGaN ICs combining gate drivers with high-frequency GaN FETs in a single chip for improved efficiency, reduced size, and lower cost. Now, the ePower™ Stage IC family redefines power conversion by integrating all functions in a single GaN-on-Si integrated circuit at higher voltages and higher frequency levels beyond the reach of silicon.