GaN技术杂谈

基于eGaN® FET的电力转换系统相比于基于硅的替代品，提供了更高的效率、更高的功率密度和更低的总体系统成本。这些优势特性促成了不断增加的功率电子组件生态系统，如门驱动器、控制器和被动组件，这些组件专门用于增强eGaN FET的性能。图1展示了一些eGaN FET的例子。

There are many reasons to increase frequency of power conversion.  Fundamentally, these reasons boil down to size/weight reduction, and cost reduction.  There are several components in the design of a power system that must perform efficiently at the targeted increased switching frequencies.  These include power switches, power switch drivers, controllers, magnetics, and capacitors. Taken collectively, these components represent the high frequency power conversion ecosystem.  Without any of these elements, the benefits of increased frequency cannot be fully realized.

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.