EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - March 15, 2011 - Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (www.epc-co.com) announce the introduction of the EPC2001 and EPC2015, two lead-free, RoHS-compliant (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN™) FETs.

The EPC2001 FET is a 100 V_DS device with a maximum R_DS(ON) of 7 milliohms with 5 V applied to the gate, and the EPC2015 is a 40 V_DS with a maximum R_DS(ON) of 4 milliohms. Both eGaN FETs provide significant performance advantages over similar state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs. Both devices have low on resistance, are smaller than silicon devices with similar resistance and have many times superior switching performance.

The eGaN FET is a viable and efficient alternative to standard MOSFET solutions in Power over Ethernet (PoE) applications. These FETs enable higher operating frequencies that can be leveraged into reduced converter size and cost. Both 13W and 26W PoE eGaN FET converters were built and evaluated side by side with standard MOSFET designs. In every instance, eGaN FET converters exhibited higher efficiencies with the potential of reducing system cost over their MOSFET counterparts.

By Johan Strydom, Ph.D., Vice President of Applications, EPC
Michael de Rooij, Ph.D., Director of Applications, EPC
March 1, 2011

Read the article

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) Market Leading eGaN™ FET Named Finalist in Prestigious 2010 EDN Innovation Awards Competition

EL SEGUNDO, Calif-February 23, 2011 - Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s EPC1010 enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN™) power FET has been named a finalist in EDN’s 21st annual Innovation Awards http://innovation.edn.com/) within the Power IC’s category.

eGaN FETs differ from silicon MOSFETs in part because of their significantly faster switching speeds. In the second article of this series, we explore the different requirements for gate drive, layout, and thermal management.

By Johan Strydom PHD, Director of Application Engineering, EPC
Power Electronics Technology
January 1, 2011

Read the article

EL SEGUNDO, Calif-January 6, 2011 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s (EPC) family of enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN™) power FETs have been honored with an Electronic Products’ Product of the Year award.

The editors of Electronic Products — a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers — evaluated thousands of products launched in 2010. The winning products were selected on the basis of innovative design, significant advancement in technology or application and substantial achievement in price and performance. The eGaN FETs demonstrated success in the category of discrete semiconductors.

EPC, the first company to deliver enhancement mode GaN (eGaN™) FETs to the market, has been recognized by EDN for inclusion on their list of "100 Hot Products for 2010."

Read the article

The intermediate bus architecture (IBA) is currently the most popular power system architecture in computing and telecommunications equipment. It typically consists of a +48 V system power distribution bus that feeds on-board bus converters, which in turn supply power to nonisolated, dc-dc converters. These nonisolated converters generate the low supply voltages required to power the various logic circuits. Because of their proximity to the circuits they power, these converters are commonly referred to as point-of-load converters (POLs).

By Johan Strydom, EPC, El Segundo, Calif. and Bob White, Embedded Power Labs, Highlands Ranch, Colo.
How2Power
November, 2010

Read the article

As enhancement mode gallium-nitride-on-silicon transistors (eGaN™) gain wider acceptance as the successor to the venerable - but aged - power MOSFET, designers have been able to improve power conversion efficiency, size, and cost. eGaN FETs, however, are based on a relatively new and immature technology with limited design infrastructure to quickly design and implement products.

By Johan Strydom PhD, Director of Application Engineering EPC
Bodo’s Power Systems
November, 2010

Read the article

The latest report from Yole Développement “GaN Technologies for Power Electronics Applications: Industry and Market Status & Forecasts” says the Total Accessible Market is $16.6b and is envisioned to be split into Power ICs, Power Discretes and Power Modules.

Compound Semiconductor
October 28, 2010

Read the article

Efficient Power Conversion’s (EPC) enhancement-mode gallium-nitride (eGaN) power transistors, although similar to standard power MOSFETs, deliver performance unattainable by silicon-based devices.

Yanping Ma, PhD, Efficient Power Conversion, El Segundo, Calif.
How2Power
October, 2010

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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

Read the article

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: