This post was originally published on Velodyne LiDAR’s “360” Blog. Learn more about eGaN technology here and EPC GaN solutions for LiDAR here.

Have you ever been driving at night—perhaps on a twisty two-lane highway—when the headlights of an oncoming car seemingly “crash” into your retinas? Blue-tinged LED beams leap out from behind a curve, or crest over a hillside, and for an instant it feels like you may have gone blind. Your vision erupts with a painful jolt of white. You squint through patchy discolorations trying to locate the lane lines. A quick flip of your high beams results in an even brighter display from the oncoming car. And now there are two drivers swerving past one another who couldn’t read the top line at the eye doctor.

As nighttime images of the earth from the International Space Station confirm, ours is an increasingly illuminated world. And LEDs, or light emitting diodes, supply a cheap and efficient means for broad illumination, not just for vehicles but increasingly for street lighting. Yet some types of LEDs have recently raised concerns of associated health risks.

Written By Sanjay Gupta, VP Product Management, WiTricity

While the possibilities of magnetic-resonance-based wireless charging are very exciting, the technology is frequently misunderstood by those not involved in the industry.

Consider the devices we use every day: From smartphones and smartwatches and potentially electric vehicles, electronics are becoming as mobile as people themselves. We rely and expect our devices to be charged at all times, ready-to-use when needed. But as it currently stands, we still must plug in our phones, our electric cars, and our smartwatches, tethering us to cords and cables, triggering range anxiety and obsessing about the remaining juice on our devices.

Gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors designed for efficient power conversion have been in production for seven years. New markets, such as light detection and ranging, envelope tracking, and wireless charging, have emerged due to the superior switching speed of GaN. These markets have enabled GaN products to achieve significant volumes, low production costs, and an enviable reliability reputation. 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. So what are the remaining barriers to the conversion of the US$12 billion silicon power metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) market? In a word: confidence. Design engineers, manufacturing engineers, purchasing managers, and senior management all need to be confident that GaN will provide benefits that more than offset the risk of adopting a new technology. Let’s look at three key risk factors: supply chain risk, cost risk, and reliability risk.

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a better semiconductor than silicon. There are many crystals that are better than silicon, but the problem has always been that they are far too expensive to be used in every application where silicon is used. But, GaN can be grown as an inexpensive thin layer on top of a standard silicon wafer enabling devices that are faster, smaller, more efficient, and less costly than their aging silicon counterparts.

This post was written by EDN senior technical editor, Steve Taranovich for the Power-management Design Center , How To Article section on APEC 2017. Originally published on April 03, 2017.”

This post was originally published on TI’s TI E2E Community “Power House” Blog. Learn more about eGaN technology here and EPC GaN solutions here.

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.

The first three installments in this series covered field reliability experience and stress test qualification of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Corporation’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).

In January of 2016 I made several predictions for the then-nascent year. Predictions were made for new markets such as wireless charging, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, and advances in medical diagnostics and internet access. Progress in these markets was made on all fronts, sometimes faster and sometimes slower than anticipated. So here we are about to start a new year and, perhaps foolishly I am ready once again to predict the future.

GaN technology is disruptive, in the best sense of the word, making possible what was once thought to be impossible – eGaN® technology is 10 times faster, significantly smaller, and with higher performance at costs comparable to silicon-based MOSFETs. The inevitability of GaN displacing the aging power MOSFET is becoming clearer with domination of most existing applications and enabling new ones.