Alex Lidow is interviewed by ECN's Editorial Director, Alix Paultre, on the Tinker's Toolbox, ECN's audio interview website.  The interview explores the attributes of GaN technology, applications opened as a result of GaN's superior performance to MOSFETs and reasons for the take-up of eGaN FET products over the past year.

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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

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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

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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."

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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

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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

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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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