News

Sign up today to get the latest news and updates from EPC on new product announcements, applications work, and much more. Sign up for EPC email updates.

EPC Announces Development Board Operating Up To 10 MHz for High Efficiency at High Frequency Point-of-Load DC-DC Conversion

EPC Announces Development Board Operating Up To 10 MHz for High Efficiency at High Frequency Point-of-Load DC-DC Conversion

The EPC9086 high efficiency half-bridge development board can operate up to 10 MHz featuring a 30 V EPC2111 eGaN® half bridge in combination with the recently introduced high speed Peregrine Semiconductor PE29102 gate driver.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—October 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announces the availability of The EPC9086 development board, a high efficiency half-bridge development board that can operate up to 10 MHz.  The EPC9086 board measures 2” x 2” and contains a 30 V, 15 A EPC2111 enhancement-mode gallium nitride half bridge in combination with the recently introduced PE29102 gate driver from Peregrine Semiconductor.

The purpose of this development board is to reduce time to market by simplifying the evaluation process of the EPC2111 eGaN by including all the critical components, such as Peregrine’s PE29102 high-speed gate driver on a single board that can be easily connected into any existing converter.

According to Mark Moffat, director of Peregrine Semiconductor's power management product line, “The PE29102 is an integrated high-speed driver specifically designed to control the gates of high switching-speed external power devices, such as eGaN FETs.”  It is important to note that the outputs of this driver can provide switching transition speeds in the sub-nanosecond range with optimized matched dead time and offers best-in-class propagation delay for hard switching applications up to 40 MHz, thus enabling the high performance of GaN power transistors. The PE29102 provides minimum pulse widths of 5ns and is offered as a 2 x 1.6 mm flip chip die, enabling a small form factor power stage for high duty cycle power conversion at high frequency.

This board may be used for applications where high frequency can enable a significant size and height reduction such as notebook and tablet computing.  The EPC9086 has been evaluated in a 12 V to point-of-load DC-DC converter application and achieved efficiency levels of 86% at 10 A when switching at 5 MHz and over 80% when switching at 10 MHz.

Price and Availability

EPC9086 High Efficiency Half-Bridge Development Boards are priced at $118.75 each.  All EPC products discussed in this document are available for immediate delivery from Digi-Key.

About EPC

EPC is the leader in enhancement-mode gallium nitride based power management technology. EPC was the first to introduce enhancement-mode gallium-nitride-on-silicon (eGaN) FETs as power MOSFET replacements in applications such as DC-DC converters, wireless power transfer<