GaN技术杂谈

新兴计算应用需求更大的功率和更小的外形尺寸。除了不断扩展的服务器市场需求外，一些最具挑战性的应用包括多用户游戏系统、自动驾驶汽车和人工智能。这些应用正在产生对可在靠近处理器的主板上挤压的DC-DC转换器的需求。

计算和电信市场的快速扩展要求中间总线转换器的解决方案越来越紧凑、高效和高功率密度。LLC谐振转换器是提供高功率密度和高效解决方案的优秀候选者。eGaN® FETs 以其超低导通电阻和寄生电容，通过显著降低损耗，受益于LLC谐振转换器，这是使用Si MOSFET时面临的挑战。展示了一种48V到6V、900W、1MHz的LLC DC到DC变压器（DCX）转换器，采用了如EPC2053 和 EPC2023等eGaN FET，峰值效率达98.1%，比功率为48W/cm2 (308 W/in2)，功率密度为69W/cm3 (1133 W/in3)。

I don’t know about you, but in my house the number of mobile devices seems to multiply overnight, along with the ways they are used.  On any given night, you may find me on a GoToMeeting conference on my laptop, my husband on a video Skype chat from his phone with his dad in Florida, my oldest son turning in an assignment on Google Classroom from his laptop, my younger son streaming videos on his tablet, and my second grader recording and posting a music.ly on her phablet.  And when we travel, these devices come with us so they need to be small and lightweight enough to come along for ride! 

This all translates into ever-increasing power demands for computing and telecom systems and the conflicting desire for small, lightweight form factors, and extended battery life. To meet these demands, point-of-load (POL) DC-DC converters (the power engines) need to be designed to be small sized and as efficient as possible. These demands translate to ever faster switching frequencies of the transistors used in the power conversion running these devices. Notebook PCs, tablets, and phablets are especially sensitive to this need as our dependency on these devices and the demands we make on them continues to grow. 

The demand by our society for information is growing at an unprecedented rate. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT), this trend for more and faster access to information is showing no signs of slowing. What makes the transfer of information at high rates of speed possible are racks and racks of servers, mostly located in centralized data centers.

As the VP of Sales and Marketing for EPC, I have attended a number of power electronics industry trade shows since the beginning of the year. What has struck me about these shows is the increasing number of end product demonstrations enabled by GaN FET and IC technology.

At CES in January, APEC in March, PCIM Europe in May, and most recently, at Computex Asia last month, GaN applications were front and center. Here are a few examples of what I saw: