Silicon -- the core ingredient in semiconductors and the driving force behind the electronics industry -- is reaching its limit, says Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion Corporation. His Los Angeles-based company is investigating the capacity of gallium nitride (GaN) to disrupt the $400 billion (£277bn) silicon industry with its improved powers of semiconducting. "This is the first 
time that there is a semiconductor that is both lower cost and has a higher performance than silicon," Lidow says.

Wired Magazine
Emma Bryce
March 31, 2016
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Emerging applications such as 48V-to-point-of-load (POL), wireless power and USB Type-C had a lot of interest. Google joined the Open Compute Project a few weeks ago and proposed a computer server-rack architecture based on a 48V power-distribution bus to improve overall system efficiency. While the 48V bus has been around for a long time, the push (and challenge) is for high-efficiency 48V-to-POL voltage regulators. EPC showcased TI’s 48V-to-1V EVM which uses the LMG5200 GaN module (driver and FETs), announced at APEC last year, and a new TI analog controller (TPS53632G).

TI E2E Community
Pradeep Shenoy
Mar 28, 2016
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You might have seen some behind-the-scenes tweets from the life of the ECN editor (and News Director) and while a picture is worth a thousand words, sometimes an engineer's perspective on a conference is worth a little more.

With that in mind, I reached out to some APEC engineers and attendees to get the lowdown on this year's Applied Power Electronics Conference in Long Beach, CA. We talked about how the show compared to last year, the biggest trends, and how APEC went for their companies.

ECNMag.com
Kasey Panetta
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At this year’s APEC 2016, news about GaN power technology was probably more dominant than at any time in the past. Real product demos using GaN, new product and technology announcements, attention to GaN in the plenary, and other discussions all reinforced the impression that GaN power devices have arrived and the technology is making inroads in the marketplace. One of the tell-tale signs is a slight shift in the discussions, away from what the devices can do to what else is needed to support the design-in of GaN power transistors.

How2Power Today
David Morrison
April 1, 2016
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EPC’s new development boards can be configured as either a buck converter or a ZVS class-D amplifier, demonstrating reduced losses at high frequency using an eGaN FET synchronous bootstrap augmented gate drive.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— March 2016 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) Introduces the EPC9066, EPC9067, and EPC9068 development boards, which are configurable to a buck converter or as a ZVS class-D amplifier. These boards provide an easy-to-use way for power systems designers to evaluate the exceptional performance of gallium nitride transistors, enabling the designers to get their products into volume production quickly. All three boards feature a zero reverse recovery (Q_RR) synchronous bootstrap rectifier augmented gate driver to increase efficiency at high frequency operation, up to 15 MHz. The boards can produce a maximum output of 2.7 A in the buck and ZVS class-D amplifier configurations. Loss reduction is realized across the entire current range.

Though there are two standards for charging appliances wirelessly, a single circuit can be devised to serve as a charging node for both of them.

Design World
Michael de Rooij, Ph.D., Vice President, Applications Engineering
March, 2016
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Alex Lidow talks about advanced envelope tracking for power management. The ability of an amplifying system to follow the signal and only output the power needed to express it can save significant amounts of energy and improve performance.

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Alex Lidow is a man on a mission. His Southern California company, Efficient Power Conversion or EPC, is using Gallium Nitride (GaN) chips instead of silicon for exciting applications, from wireless power charging and 4G LTE to augmented reality and autonomous vehicles.

But can this hot new technology ultimately displace the ubiquitous silicon chip in a $300 billion semiconductor market?

Fox Business
By Steve Tobak
March 18, 2016
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Glamour items like energy harvesting and wireless power transfer are likely to make "guest appearances" at next week's APEC Conference. GaN transistor deployments will be carefully monitored. But on-going efforts to promote data-center energy transfer efficiency retain their "bread-and-butter" utility.

EE Times
By: Stephan Ohr, Consultant, Semiconductor Industry Analyst
March 16, 2016
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After getting his PhD in applied physics at Stanford, Alex Lidow spent 30 years at International Rectifier (IR), a publicly traded chip company founded by his father Eric Lidow back in the 1940s.

Alex pioneered IR’s power management technology, co-authored the core-patents on which its business was built, became co-CEO with his brother, Derek, in 1995, and ran the company solo after Derek left to found market research firm iSupply in 1999.

Entrepreneur
By: Steve Tobak
March, 2016
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EPC Phase Seven Reliability Report shows that eGaN^® FETs have solid reliability and are dependable replacement solutions to traditional silicon devices.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— March 2016 — EPC announces its Phase Seven Reliability Report showing the distribution of over 17 billion accumulated field-device hours and detailing test data from more than 7 million equivalent device-hours under stress. The stress tests included intermittent operating life (IOL), early life failure rate (ELFR), humidity with bias, temperature cycling, and electrostatic discharge. The study reports a composite 0.24 FIT rate for products in the field, which is consistent with all of EPC’s in situ evaluations to date and validates the readiness of eGaN FETs to supplant their aging silicon cousins for commercial power switching applications.

The demand for information in our society is growing at an unprecedented rate. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the Internet of Things, this trend for more and faster access to information is showing no signs of slowing. What makes the transfer of information at high rates of speed possible are racks and racks of servers, mostly located in centralized data.

EEWeb
Alex Lidow, Ph.D., David Reusch, Ph.D., and John Glaser, Ph.D.
March, 2016
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In this series we will look at the various ways the reliability of eGaN^® technology has been validated, and how we are developing models from our understanding of the physics of failures that can help predict failure rates under almost any operating condition. In this first installment and the next, we will look at the field experience from the past six years of GaN transistors use in a variety of applications from vehicle headlamps to medical systems to 4G/LTE telecom systems. Diving into the failure of each and every part leads to some valuable lessons learned.

Planet Analog
Chris Jakubiec, Robert Strittmatter, Ph.D., and Alex Lidow, Ph.D.
March 1, 2016
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EPC will exhibit more than 20 demonstrations showing how GaN technology’s superior performance is changing the way we live and company experts will deliver six technical presentations on GaN FET technology at APEC^® 2016, the premier global event in applied power electronics

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — March, 2016 — The EPC team will be presenting six technical presentations on gallium nitride (GaN) technology and applications at APEC 2016 in Long Beach, California from March 20th through the 24th. In addition, the company will feature its latest eGaN^® FETs and IC’s as well as their customers’ end products that are enabled by eGaN technology. Demonstrations will include wireless power systems that span the full power range of Qi and AirFuel standards and a multi-mode solution, a single stage 48 V – 1 V DC-DC converter, 3-D real-time LiDAR imaging camera, and an LTE compatible envelope tracking supply in booth #2244.

Power transistors with faster switching speeds will enable power supplies with smaller form factors and higher energy transfer efficiencies. Indeed, the elimination of heat sinks will give designers the ability to visualize entirely new form factors for power bricks and modules, including those enabling wireless power transfers. Gallium-nitride (GaN) transistors fabricated on silicon substrates can boost efficiencies and help shrink the footprint of power supplies.

Electronic Design
March, 2016
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This article presents an envelope tracking power supply using EPC8004 high frequency eGaN^® FETs for 4G LTE wireless base station infrastructure. An ET power supply with four-phase soft-switching buck converter using eGaN FETs is able to accurately track a 20 MHz 7 db PAPR LTE envelope signal with greater than 92% total efficiency, delivering 60 W average power. The design is scalable to satisfy different power levels by choosing different eGaN FETs.

Bodo’s Power Systems
Yuanzhe Zhang, Ph.D., Michael de Rooij, Ph.D.
March, 2016
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EPC9065 development board has the highest power and highest efficiency at 6.78 MHz for the AirFuel^TM wireless power standard, using eGaN^® FETs

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— February 2016 — Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) announces the EPC9065, a development board that can serve as the amplifier stage for AirFuel^TM Alliance Class 4 and Class 5 wireless power transfer applications. This board is a Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) differential-mode class-D amplifier development board configured at, but is not limited to, 6.78 MHz (Lowest ISM band).

New EPC2040 eGaN^® FET offers extremely fast and consistent switching, enabling greater resolution and accuracy in applications dependent upon pulsed laser drivers, which include LiDAR systems used for guidance in 3D sensing in augmented reality systems and autonomous vehicles

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — February 2016 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the EPC2040 power transistor, an extremely small, fast switching gallium nitride power transistor that enables superior resolution, faster response time, and greater accuracy for high speed end-use applications. High stability of the threshold over temperature ensures the high stability as the laser heats up. For example, this product is ideal for pulsed laser drivers used in LiDAR technology, the technology at the heart of autonomous vehicle guidance systems and augmented reality platforms. The end result of the EPC2040’s superior performance is increased accuracy and higher resolution in these systems.

In this installment, we present a method to design a suitable EMI filter that can reduce unwanted frequencies to levels within radiated EMI specifications, and do this without negatively impacting the performance of the wireless power coil. In addition, the overall radiated EMI design aspects will also be covered.

EEWeb - Wireless & RF Magazine
Michael de Rooij, Ph.D.
February, 1, 2016
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EPC9059 development board showcases industry’s first monolithic half-bridge enhancement-mode gallium nitride (eGaN^®) integrated circuits for high current, high frequency point-of-load applications for increased power density.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— January 2016 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) introduces the EPC9059 half-bridge development board for high current, high frequency point-of-load (POL) applications using eGaN ICs to reduce power conversion size. The EPC9059 development board has a 30 V maximum device voltage with a 50 A maximum output current. In this application two 30 V EPC2100 eGaN IC’s operating in parallel with a single onboard gate driver to achieve higher output currents. GaN devices have superior current sharing capability compared to silicon MOSFETs, making them more attractive for parallel operation.