GaN Talk a blog dedicated to crushing silicon
Term: Gallium Nitride
17 post(s) found

Jan 16, 2023

Myths about Gallium Nitride Semiconductors

Renee Yawger, Director of Marketing

Gallium nitride (GaN) has emerged as the technology to offer greater efficiency, significantly reduce system size and weight, and enable entirely new applications not achievable with silicon. So, why do so many myths still prevail about GaN and what are the facts?

One of the reasons so much misinformation persists about GaN is that suppliers of the incumbent silicon technology use scare tactics including rumors of reliability problems, design challenges, high prices, and unreliable supply chains to dissuade potential GaN users.

Despite these attacks, GaN continues to gain acceptance not only in enabling applications such as lidar, but into traditional applications where the silicon MOSFET previously held the dominant position, like data centers and vehicle electronics. This article will debunk the most common myths about GaN and show how GaN FETs and GaN ICs are creating a displacement cycle in power conversion.

Mar 04, 2022

Efficient Motor Drive Performance at Low Cost for e-bikes, Drones, and Robotics with GaN FETs

Marco Palma, Director of Motor Drives Systems and Applications

Mobility is a driving factor in all economies. Electro mobility (or e-Mobility) is a clean and impactful way of keeping the gears of commerce grinding without contributing to the environmental stresses of inefficient motors or fossil fuel burning engines that cause damage to our planet. There is an ever-increasing demand for highly efficient and compact motor drive designs. EPC’s GaN-based motor drive reference designs for eMobility applications are in development to jump-start the competitive and environmentally friendly alternatives that support this trend.

Jan 07, 2022

How to Design a 12 V to 48 V / 500 W 2-Phase Boost Converter Using eGaN FETs and the Renesas ISL81807 Controller with Same BOM Size as Silicon, Offering Superior Efficiency and Power Density

Jianglin Zhu, Senior Applications Engineer

48 V is being adopted in many applications, including AI systems, data centers, and mild hybrid electric vehicles. However, the conventional 12 V ecosystem is still dominant, so a high power density 12 V to 48 V boost converter is required. The fast-switching speed and low RDS(on) of eGaN FETs can help address this challenge. In this post, the design of a 12 V to 48 V, 500 W DC-DC power module using eGaN® FETs directly driven by eGaN FET compatible ISL81807 controller IC from Renesas in the simple and low-cost synchronous boost topology is evaluated.

Oct 07, 2018

A 95%-Efficient 48 V-to-1 V/10 A VRM Hybrid Converter

Rick Pierson, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing

Gab-Su Seo1,2, Ratul Das1, and Hanh-Phuc Le1
1Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, University of Colorado
2Power Systems Engineering Center, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado, U.S.A.

With drastically increasing demands for cloud computing and big data processing, the electric energy consumption of data centers in the U.S. is expected to reach 73 billion kWh by 2020 [1], which will account for approximately 10% of the U.S total electric energy consumption. A large portion of this consumption is caused by losses from inefficient power delivery architectures that require a lot of attention for improvements [2], [3].

Dec 05, 2017

Designing Manufacturable and Reliable Printed Circuit Boards Employing Chip-Scale eGaN FETs

Michael de Rooij, Ph.D., Vice President, Applications Engineering

Written by Michael de Rooij and Alana Nakata - Efficient Power Conversion

Published in: PCIM Europe 2017; International Exhibition and Conference for Power Electronics, Intelligent Motion, Renewable Energy and Energy Management; Proceedings of

eGaN FETs, which are available in non-traditional chip scale packages (CSP) as land grid array (LGA) and/or ball grid array (BGA) formats, have repeatedly demonstrated higher power density and higher efficiency performance than equivalent MOSFETs across various applications [1, 2]. Those improvements are contingent upon proper layout practices documented extensively in [1, 3] that minimize unwanted parasitic elements. Over the seven years since eGaN FETs were first launched into the market there have been a total of 127 device failures out of a total of more than 17 billion hours in actual use in the field, 75 of which were a result of poor assembly technique or poor printed circuit board (PCB) design practices [4]. Designers are becoming more familiar with the PCB design rules that affect manufacturability and are less forgiving compared to MOSFETs due to their relatively smaller sizes. This paper will cover the various guidelines for PCB design that maximize the performance of eGaN FETs and reliability yet still rely on existing PCB manufacturing capabilities.

Apr 11, 2017

Four Ways GaN Technology Helps Save the Planet

Alex Lidow, Ph.D., CEO and Co-founder

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.

Mar 09, 2017

How we devised a wirelessly powered television set

Michael de Rooij, Ph.D., Vice President, Applications Engineering

Televisions can get their content wirelessly, but there is one set of wires they still need: those in their power cord. The consumer electronics industry has floated ideas for freeing TVs from their power cords, but this goal remains elusive. There are several reasons, such as the difficultly of meeting high-power requirements for large-screen TVs and the need for identifying an economical technology. Nevertheless, eGaN FETs could play a role in making TVs truly cordless devices.

Feb 03, 2017

eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure – How eGaN FETs are expected to behave as the result of high gate voltage stress conditions

Chris Jakubiec, Director of Reliability and Failure Analysis

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.

Jan 13, 2017

eGaN Technology Reliability and Physics of Failure - Thermo-mechanical board level reliability of eGaN devices

Chris Jakubiec, Director of Reliability and Failure Analysis

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).

Dec 04, 2016

See, Learn, and Discuss eGaN Technology at CES 2017

Rick Pierson, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing

Every year in January 2017, the world’s consumer electronics community gathers in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to see, learn and discuss the latest innovations and products available in the world of electronics.

More than 3,800 exhibitors spread out across 2.47 million net square feet of exhibit space, is the location where over 170,000 industry professionals, 50,000 outside of the U.S. wander, ogle, and “play with” the latest electronic devices.