With the rise of autonomous cars and electric propulsion as driving forces in automotive applications, a huge new market for power devices based on gallium nitride grown on a silicon substrate (GaN-on-Si) is emerging.

Design World
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Gallium nitride(GaN)-on-silicon low voltage power devices have enabled many new applications since commercial availability began in 2010. New markets, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), envelope tracking, and wireless power, emerged due to the superior switching speed of GaN. These new applications have helped develop a strong supply chain, low production costs, and an enviable reliability record. All of this provides adequate incentive for the more conservative design engineers in applications, such as dc–dc converters, ac–dc converters, and automotive to start their evaluation process. In this series, a few of the many, high volume applications taking advantage of GaN to achieve new levels of end-product differentiation will be discussed. First, it is useful to explore the factors attributing to the rapid acceleration of the adoption rate.

Power Systems Design
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The reason eGaN FETs (and now ICs) are used in all the LiDAR systems for autonomous cars, and now autonomous race cars, is that they enable much higher resolution (due to extremely short laser pulses), faster image speed (due to short laser pulses), and the ability to see greater distances with high accuracy (due to fast laser pulses at very high current).

Planet Analog
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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) has successfully completed automotive AEC Q101 qualification for two gallium nitride devices.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— May 2018 — EPC announces successful AEC Q101 qualification of two eGaN^® devices, opening a range of applications in automotive and other harsh environments.  The products, EPC2202 and EPC2203, are both discrete transistors in wafer level chip-scale packaging (WLCS) with 80 V_DS ratings and will soon be followed with several more discrete transistors and integrated circuits designed for the harsh automotive environment. 

Velodyne LiDAR Inc., the recognized global leader in Light, Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology, today announced a groundbreaking design for a solid-state LiDAR sensor that can deliver a subsystem cost of under $50 U.S. when sold in high-volume manufacturing scale.

Venture Beat
December, 13, 2016
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Lidar is a fantastic sensor for autonomous cars. Most companies developing self-driving vehicles seem to agree that the massive amount of long range, high accuracy data that you get from lidar is necessary, especially for complicated and variable urban environments. Really, the only reason why there's been so much focus on getting autonomy to work with just cameras and radar is that cameras and radar are cheap, and lidar is ridiculously expensive.

IEEE Spectrum
December, 13, 2016
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Carmakers and tech firms competing to develop automated vehicles seek a combination of sensors and cameras that provide maximum perception and visibility of surroundings at a cost that’s manageable for mass production.

Forbes
December, 13, 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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