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Best Practices for Integrating eGaN FETs

Best Practices for Integrating eGaN FETs

Best design practices utilize the advantages offered by eGaN FETs, including printed circuit board (PCB) layout and thermal management. As GaN transistor switching charges continue to decrease, system parasitics must also be reduced to achieve maximum switching speeds and minimize parasitic ringing typical of power converters.

Power Electronics
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EPC Introduces 40 V Gallium Nitride Power Transistor 8 Times Smaller Than Equivalently Rated MOSFETS

EPC Introduces 40 V Gallium Nitride Power Transistor 8 Times Smaller Than Equivalently Rated MOSFETS

EPC2049 GaN power transistor offers power systems designers a 40 V, 5 mΩ power transistor about 8 times smaller than equivalently rated silicon MOSFETs for point of load converters, LiDAR, and low inductance motor drive.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2017 — EPC announces the EPC2049 power transistor for use in applications including point of load converters, LiDAR, envelope tracking power supplies, class-D audio, and low inductance motor drives. The EPC2049 has a voltage rating of 40 V and maximum RDS(on) of 5 mΩ with a 175 A pulsed output current.

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Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) Receives 2017 Top 10 Power Products Award from Electronic Products China Magazine/21iC Media

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) Receives 2017 Top 10 Power Products Award from Electronic Products China Magazine/21iC Media

EPC’s latest family of eGaN® transistors and ICs takes a quantum leap in increasing Performance while reducing costs for new and existing applications currently served by MOSFETs 

EL SEGUNDO, Calif — September 2017 Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s Gen 5 eGaN® transistor and IC family has been honored with an Electronic Products China / 21iC Media’s “Top 10 Power Products – Best Application Award.” The award presentation was announced on September 15th, 2017 in Beijing, China during 21iC Power Conference 2017.

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Facts Say About An Account from a Scientist: he saved the world's 15% energy consumption prior. Now, he discovers silicon's replacement material

Facts Say About An Account from a Scientist: he saved the world's 15% energy consumption prior. Now, he discovers silicon's replacement material

This scientist got his Ph.D 40 years ago who saved the world's 15% energy consumption at one time. He is continuing his journey of innovations now in discovering silicon's replacement material for humankind.

My father always taught me that the true worth of an individual is measured based on their contribution to society. As I entered graduate school in 1975 I knew my passion was in the field of semiconductors, and I felt my best contribution to society would come from finding a successor to silicon. I did my graduate work in Gallium Arsenide, but realized by the time I received my PhD in 1977 that Gallium Arsenide’s prospects were limited as a semiconductor due to the basic materials properties, I went to work applying everything I learned to making better devices in silicon.

Fortune China
June 15, 2017
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EPC Joining PCIM Asia 2017 For Knowledge Exchange with Engineers on How to Choose among 6.78 MHz Amplifier Topologies for High Power, Highly-resonant Wireless Charging Applications

EPC Joining PCIM Asia 2017 For Knowledge Exchange with Engineers on How to Choose among 6.78 MHz Amplifier Topologies for High Power, Highly-resonant Wireless Charging Applications

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — June 21st, 2017 -- Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, the world’s leader in enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN®) power FETs and ICs, enables a lower-cost, single transmit amplifier solution that can wirelessly charge devices, regardless of the standard used in the receiving device.

Meet EPC experts on power management at PCIM Asia Exhibition and Conference on June 28th, 2017 at 11 a.m. at Meeting Room 2, B2 of Shanghai World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center in China. Dr. Michael de Rooij, Vice President of Application Engineering, EPC, will share with engineers about a choice among topologies to achieve customer-oriented designs for high power, highly resonant wireless charging applications.

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Wolfram Krueger Joins Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) as Vice President of European Sales

Wolfram Krueger Joins Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) as Vice President of European Sales

Mr. Krueger to direct EPC’s European sales organization and assist customers in adopting eGaN® FETs and Integrated Circuits for leading-edge power conversion systems

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — June 2017 — To support its accelerating growth, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) is proud to announce that Wolfram Krueger has joined the EPC leadership team as Vice President of European sales. Mr. Krueger has over 30 years of sales operation experience within the semiconductor industry. His primary responsibilities at EPC are creating and implementing sales and marketing strategies to achieve the company’s sales objectives throughout Europe. He is based in Cologne, Germany.

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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Introduces 200 V Gallium Nitride Power Transistor 12 Times Smaller Than Equivalently Rated MOSFETS

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Introduces 200 V Gallium Nitride Power Transistor 12 Times Smaller Than Equivalently Rated MOSFETS

EPC2046 GaN power transistor offers power systems designers a 200 V, 25 mΩ power transistor about 12 times smaller than equivalently rated silicon MOSFETs for wireless power, multi-level AC-DC power supplies, robotics, and solar micro inverters.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — May 2017 — EPC announces the EPC2046 power transistor for use in applications including wireless power, multi-level AC-DC power supplies, robotics, solar micro inverters, and low inductance motor drives. The EPC2046 has a voltage rating of 200 V and maximum RDS(on) of 25 mΩ with a 55 A pulsed output current.

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EPC Releases Video Series on How GaN is Changing the Way We Live

EPC Releases Video Series on How GaN is Changing the Way We Live

Produced by industry experts, Efficient Power Conversion has posted six videos showing active end-use applications such as a wireless power tabletop, high performance LiDAR, single-stage 48 V – 1.8 V DC-DC conversion, and precision motor drive control using gallium nitride transistors and integrated circuits.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – April 2017 – Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (www.epc-co.com) has created and posted to its website six short videos presenting end-customer applications using eGaN® FETs and ICs. These videos show how GaN technology is changing the way we live and challenging power systems design engineers to incorporate the high performance of gallium nitride FETs and ICs into their next generation power system designs.

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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Publishes Ninth Reliability Report Documenting Millions of GaN Technology Device Hours with Zero Failures After Rigorous Stress Testing

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Publishes Ninth Reliability Report Documenting Millions of GaN Technology Device Hours with Zero Failures After Rigorous Stress Testing

EPC’s Phase Nine Reliability Report documents a combined total of over 9 million GaN stress device-hours with zero failures. This report focuses on thermo-mechanical board level reliability, describing for the first time, a predictive model for solder joint integrity and showing the superior reliability of wafer level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) GaN technology over comparable packaged devices.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— April 2017 — EPC announces its Phase Nine Reliability Report showing the results of a rigorous set of thermo-mechanical board level reliability testing. The Phase Nine Reliability Report adds to the growing knowledge base previously published in EPC’s first eight reports and represents an ongoing commitment to study, learn, and share information on the reliability of GaN technology.

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How GaN Power Transistors Drive High-Performance Lidar: Generating ultrafast pulsed power with GaN FETs

How GaN Power Transistors Drive High-Performance Lidar: Generating ultrafast pulsed power with GaN FETs

Light detection and ranging (lidar) is a versatile light-based remote sensing technology that recently has been the subject of great attention. It has shown up in a number of media venues and has even led to public debate about the engineering choices of a well-known electric car company, Tesla Motors. While this article is not going to enter the fray, it will provide some background on lidar and discuss its strong connection to power electronics technologies.

Published in: IEEE Power Electronics Magazine ( Volume: 4, Issue: 1, March 2017 )
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EPC eGaN moves closer to the ideal capabilities of the power element

EPC eGaN moves closer to the ideal capabilities of the power element

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) has dealt another blow to the silicon MOSFET power element with its Generation 5 (Gen5) process enhancements, bringing improved performance while decreasing the cost of off-the-shelf Gallium Nitride transistors and shrinking their die size and board footprint.

Alex Lidow, EPC’s CEO/co-founder, and his team have once again put their expertise to work in their efforts to provide designers these unique power solution choices for new markets that need performance beyond what silicon devices have been able to provide. The team’s technical capabilities and in-depth understanding, even into the quantum mechanics of the process, are enabling both better performance as well as shrinking the size and cost of their solutions

EDN
March 15, 2017
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Gallium Nitride maker EPC takes a big step forward in its quest to kill silicon chips

Gallium Nitride maker EPC takes a big step forward in its quest to kill silicon chips

The $330 billion silicon chip industry is the foundation of everything electronic. But it’s slowing down as it reaches a new level of maturity that is prompting a bunch of mergers and acquisitions.

That’s why Alex Lidow, an industry pioneer and the chief proponent of an alternative material to silicon — gallium nitride (GaN) — feels like his time has come. His company, Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), is unveiling a new generation of eGaN chips that are half the size of previous chips and have significantly higher performance.

VentureBeat
March 15, 2017
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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) to Showcase Life-Changing Applications Using eGaN Technology at 2017 Applied Power Electronics and Exposition Conference (APEC)

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) to Showcase Life-Changing Applications Using eGaN Technology at 2017 Applied Power Electronics and Exposition Conference (APEC)

EPC will exhibit more than 25 demonstrations showing how GaN technology’s superior performance is changing the way we live and company experts will deliver seven technical presentations on GaN FET and IC technology at APEC® 2017, the premier global event in applied power electronics.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — March 2017 — The EPC team will be delivering seven technical presentations on gallium nitride (GaN) technology and applications at APEC 2017 in Tampa, Florida from March 26th through the 30th. In addition, the company will feature its latest eGaN® FETs and ICs, as well as their customers’ end products that are enabled by eGaN technology.

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EPC Development Board Shows the Ultra Fast Transition Capability of eGaN FETs over MOSFETs Giving Superior LiDAR System Performance When Used in Autonomous Vehicles

EPC Development Board Shows the Ultra Fast Transition Capability of eGaN FETs over MOSFETs Giving Superior LiDAR System Performance When Used in Autonomous Vehicles

Ultra fast transition eGaN® FETs used on the EPC9126 can drive laser diodes with high current pulses and total pulse widths as low as 5 ns, thus enhancing the quality of information a LiDAR system will detect, including the accuracy, precision, and processing speed.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — January 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the availability of the EPC9126, a 100 V high current pulsed laser diode driver evaluation board. In a LiDAR system, used for detecting objects in autonomous vehicle applications, speed and accuracy of detection is critical. As demonstrated by this board, the rapid transition capability of eGaN FETs provide power pulses to drive the laser up to ten times faster than an equivalent MOSFET, thus enhancing the overall performance of a LiDAR system.

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eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure - Gate Voltage Stress Reliability

eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure - Gate Voltage Stress Reliability

The previous installment in this series focused on the physics of failure surrounding thermo-mechanical reliability of EPC eGaN wafer level chip-scale packages. A fundamental understanding of the potential failure modes under voltage bias is also important. This installment will provide an overview of the physics of failure associated with voltage bias at the gate electrode of gallium nitride (GaN) field effect transistors (FETs). Here we look at the case of taking the gate control voltage to the specified limit and beyond to investigate how eGaN FETs behave over a projected lifetime.

Planet Analog
Chris Jakubiec
November 29, 2016
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How This Tech in Self-Driving Cars Is Paving a Road Beyond Silicon

How This Tech in Self-Driving Cars Is Paving a Road Beyond Silicon

In the future, self-driving cars will require laser-based sensing tech, and these systems will need new types of high-speed transistors and chips that can beat out silicon.

That’s the assertion of Alex Lidow, a Stanford PhD physicist, entrepreneur, and CEO and founder of Efficient Power Conversion (commonly called EPC), a company based in El Segundo, Calif. that makes transistors and chips out of a material that operates more quickly and efficiently—and costs less than silicon.

Fortune
September 8, 2016
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eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure - Strain on solder joints

eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure - Strain on solder joints

The first three installments in this series covered field reliability experience and stress test qualification of EPC’s enhancement-mode gallium nitride (eGaN) field effect transistors (FETs) and integrated circuits (ICs). Excellent field reliability that was documented is the result of applying stress tests covering the intended operating conditions the devices will experience within applications. Of equal importance is understanding the underlying physics of how eGaN devices will fail when stressed beyond intended operating conditions (e.g. datasheet parameters and safe operating area). This installment will take a deeper dive into the physics of failure centered around thermo-mechanical reliability of eGaN wafer level chip-scale packages (WLCSP).

Planet Analog
Chris Jakubiec
September 7, 2016
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Emerging server technologies: 6 hot trends to watch

Emerging server technologies: 6 hot trends to watch

Gallium Nitride ICs: Increasing server power efficiencies - Reducing waste power, cooling, and space aren't just data-center-size concerns; they're also battles fought inside the confines of each rack. And, sometimes, even one small change can make a big difference.

TechBeacon
August 2, 2016
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