EPC, the first company to deliver enhancement mode GaN (eGaNTM) FETs to the market, has been named in EE Times ‘60 Emerging Startups’ list for the second consecutive year

By Peter Clark
EE Times
November 7, 2010

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The weather was perfect in Chi-town at the Darnell Power Forum but the technologies were hot including a talk by Alex Lidow CEO of Efficient Power Conversion Corp., who discussed why the power industry should consider GaN for improving performance.

By Paul O’Shea
EEBEAT
September 14, 2010

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The recent introduction of enhancement mode GaN transistors (eGaN™) as power MOSFET/ IGBT replacements in power management applications enables many new products that promise to add great system value. In general, an eGaN transistor behaves much like a power MOSFET with a quantum leap in performance, but to extract all of the newly-available eGaN transistor performance requires designers to understand the differences in drive requirements.

By Johan Strydom and Alex Lidow
September, 2010

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One yardstick to compare enhancement mode GaN (eGaN) power devices with state-of-the-art silicon MOSFETs is FOM. However, beyond these pure mathematical numbers, there are other device and package related parameters that significantly influence in-circuit performance.

By Johan Strydom PHD, Director of Application Engineering, EPC
Power Electronics Technology
September 1, 2010

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Thirty years of silicon power-MOSFET development has taught us that one of the key variables controlling the adoption rate of a disruptive technology is how easy the new technology is to use. This principle has guided the design of EPC’s enhancement-mode GaN (eGaN) transistors. This article explains why eGaN devices are easy to use, describing how they operate and their similarities and differences versus power MOSFETs.

By Johan Strydom
How2Power
June, 2010

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Due to its advantages GaN will probably become the dominant technology. GaN has a much higher critical electric field than silicon which enables this new class of devices to withstand much greater voltage from drain to source with much less penalty in on-resistance.

By Alex Lidow, PhD
Bodo’s Power Systems
June, 2010

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Recent breakthroughs by EPC in processing gallium nitride (GaN) have produced enhancement-mode devices with high conductivity and hyper-fast switching, with a silicon-like cost structure and fundamental operating mechanism.

By Robert Beach, Steve Colino
Electronic Design
April 29, 2010

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For the past three decades, Silicon-based power management efficiency and cost have shown steady improvement. In the last few years, however, the rate of improvement has slowed as the Silicon power MOSFET has asymptotically approached its theoretical bounds. Gallium Nitride grown on top of a silicon substrate could displace Silicon across a significant portion of the power management market.

By Alex Lidow, PhD
Power Electronics Europe
Issue 2, 2010

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)—Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announced the introduction of the EPC9002 development board to make it easier for users to get started designing with EPC’s 100V enhancement-mode GaN transistor products.

The EPC9002 development board is a 50 V maximum input voltage, 7 A maximum output current, half bridge with onboard gate drives, featuring the EPC1001 100V GaN Power Transistor. The purpose of this development board is to simplify the evaluation process of the EPC1001 GaN power transistor by including all the critical components on a single board that can be easily connected into any existing converter. The EPC9002 development board is 2” x 1.5” and contains not only two EPC1001 GaN transistors in a half bridge configuration with gate drivers, but also an on board gate drive supply and all critical components and layout for optimal switching performance. There are also various probe points to facilitate simple waveform measurement and efficiency calculation.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)—Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announced that the company has made available on its web site SPICE models for all of its enhancement mode GaN transistors.

TSPICE, PSPICE, and LTSPICE device models have been developed to help the designer of advanced GaN-based power conversion circuits and systems understand the value of this new power transistor family and reduce their time-to-market with benchmark products. These free downloads are available at:

A startup led by chip veteran Alex Lidow has officially announced its formation, disclosed its supply-chain partners and unveiled its first products in the emerging gallium nitride (GaN) arena.

By Mark LaPedus
EE Times
March 8, 2010

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EL SEGUNDO, Calif-March 8, 2010 -Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today introduced a family of enhancement mode power transistors based on its proprietary Gallium Nitride on Silicon technology.

Spanning a range of 40 Volts to 200 Volts, and 4 milliohms to 100 milliohms, these power transistors demonstrate significant performance advantages over state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs. EPC’s technology produces devices that are smaller than similar resistance silicon devices and have many times superior switching performance. Applications that benefit from this newly available performance are DC-DC power supplies, point-of-load converters, class D audio amplifiers, notebook and netbook computers, LED drive circuits, telecom base stations, and cell phones, to name just a few.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - March 8, 2010 -Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announced that Digi Key Corporation will be the exclusive global distributor for EPC’s line of enhancement-mode Gallium Nitride power transistors.

Spanning a range of 40 Volts to 200 Volts, and 4 milliohms to 100 milliohms, these power transistors demonstrate significant performance advantages over state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs. EPC’s technology produces devices that are smaller than similar resistance silicon devices and have many times superior switching performance. Applications that benefit from this newly available performance are DC-DC power supplies, point-of-load converters, class D audio amplifiers, notebook and netbook computers, LED drive circuits, telecom base stations, and cell phones, to name just a few.

The enhancement mode -normally OFF- GaN technology was explicitly developed to replace power MOSFETs. Says Alex Lidow, EPC’s co-founder and CEO, enhancement mode - rather than depletion mode - is essential for GaN to become a broad-scale silicon power MOSFET replacement.

By Margery Conner
EDN
March 5, 2010

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A breakthrough in processing gallium nitride (GaN) on a silicon substrate has produced enhancement-mode FETs with high conductivity and hyperfast switching. Its cost structure and fundamental operating mechanism are similar to silicon-only MOSFET alternate.

Article By Sam Davis, Editor in Chief
Power Electronics Technology
March 1, 2010

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