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.

How GaN Integrated Circuits Are Redefining Power Conversion

How GaN Integrated Circuits Are Redefining Power Conversion

Gallium nitride (GaN) power devices have been in production for over 10 years and, beyond just performance and cost improvements, the most significant opportunity for GaN technology to impact the power conversion market comes from the intrinsic ability to integrate multiple devices on the same substrate. This capability will allow monolithic power systems to be designed on a single chip in a more straightforward, higher efficiency, and more cost-effective way.

Power Electronic News
March, 2021
Read article

Read more

Lidar Demonstration Board Drives Lasers with Currents up to 220 A with Under 3-ns Pulses using eGaN FETs

Lidar Demonstration Board Drives Lasers with Currents up to 220 A with Under 3-ns Pulses using eGaN FETs

The ultra-fast transition EPC2034C eGaN® FETs used on the EPC9150 enables high current pulses up to 220 A and pulse widths under 3 ns, thus allowing a lidar system to see farther, faster, and better.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— March 2021 — Efficient Power Conversion  (EPC) announces the availability of the EPC9150, a 200 V, high current, pulsed-laser diode driver demonstration board. In a lidar system, used to create 3-D maps for autonomous vehicle applications, speed and accuracy of object detection is critical. As demonstrated by this board, the rapid transition capability of the EPC2034C eGaN FETs provide power pulses to drive the laser diodes, VCSELs or LEDs up to ten times faster than an equivalent MOSFET and in a small fraction of the area, energy, and cost. Thus, enhancing the overall performance, including accuracy, precision, and processing speed as well as the price of a lidar system.

Read more

EPC Automotive Qualified 65 V eGaN FET Enables Higher Resolution for Lidar Systems

EPC Automotive Qualified 65 V eGaN FET Enables Higher Resolution for Lidar Systems

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) expands AEC Q101 product family with the addition of the EPC2219, 65 V gallium nitride transistor with integrated reverse gate clamp diode optimized for high resolution lidar systems.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— March 2021 — EPC announces successful AEC Q101 qualification of the 65 V EPC2219 designed for lidar systems in the automotive industry and other harsh environments. 

Read more

Minimizing Thermo-mechanical Stress in Chipscale eGaN Devices

Minimizing Thermo-mechanical Stress in Chipscale eGaN Devices

Enhancement-mode gallium nitride (eGaN) FETs have demonstrated excellent thermomechanical reliability in actual operation in the field or when tested according to AEC or JEDEC standards. This is because of the inherent simplicity of the “package,” the lack of wire bonds, dissimilar materials, or mold compound. Recently, an extensive study of underfill products was conducted to experimentally generate lifetime predictions. A finite element analysis at the end of this section explains the experimental results and generates guidelines for selection of underfill based on key material properties.

Bodo's Power
March, 2021
Read article

Read more

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Revolutionizes Lidar System Design with Release of eToF Laser Driver IC Family of Products

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) Revolutionizes Lidar System Design with Release of eToF Laser Driver IC Family of Products

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) introduces the first of a new gallium nitride (GaN) integrated circuit (IC) product family offering higher performance and smaller solution size for time-of-flight (ToF) lidar applications including robotics, drones, 3D sensing, and autonomous cars.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— February 2021 — EPC announces the introduction of a laser driver that integrates a 40 V, 10 A FET with integrated gate driver and 3.3 logic level input in a single chip for time-of-flight lidar systems used in robotics, surveillance systems, drones, autonomous cars, and vacuum cleaners.

Read more

EPC’s ePower Stage EPC2152 Integrated Circuit Named Finalist in Prestigious Elektra Awards

EPC’s ePower Stage EPC2152 Integrated Circuit Named Finalist in Prestigious Elektra Awards

EPC’s ePower™ Stage EPC2152 Integrated Circuit has been selected as a finalist in the Semiconductor Product of the Year – Analogue category, in this year’s Elektra Awards.  These prestigious annual awards have been running for over 19 years to reward and recognize companies and individuals for their excellent performance, innovation and contribution to the global electronics industry.

Companies are invited to enter individual categories and must demonstrate how innovative their product is, how it addresses its intended application better than incumbent products and what additional applications or markets could be opened-up.  Judging is carried out by an independently and unbiased, diverse, and knowledgeable panel of industry experts.  Due to the current COVID restrictions the Elektra Awards ceremony this year will be held virtually on 25th March and the winners announced during the event.

Read more

GaN Is Revolutionizing Motor Drive Applications

GaN Is Revolutionizing Motor Drive Applications

In last month’s Safety & Compliance column in How2Power, “WBG Semiconductors Pose Safety And EMI Challenges In Motor Drive Applications,”[1]Kevin Parmenter made some assertions about the difficulties of using SiC, and to a lesser extent GaN, power semiconductors in large motor-drive applications. This commentary is a response to that article, showing that GaN can be a game changer in low-voltage integrated motors.

How2Power
February, 2021
Read article

Read more

GaN for High Density Servers

GaN for High Density Servers

Gallium nitride (GaN) devices offer performance in a small form factor, increasing the efficiency, and reducing the system cost for 48 V power conversion applications. They have been adopted in high volumes in high density computing, as well as many new automotive power system designs.

Electronic Specifier
February, 2021
Read article

Read more

GaN is as Easy to Use as Silicon: EPC Introduces a 48 V to 12 V Demo Board Featuring EPC eGaN FETs and New Renesas DC-DC Controller

GaN is as Easy to Use as Silicon: EPC Introduces a 48 V to 12 V Demo Board Featuring EPC eGaN FETs and New Renesas DC-DC Controller

The combination of the Renesas dual synchronous GaN buck controller and ultra-efficient eGaN® FETs from EPC (Efficient Power Conversion) enables high power density and efficiency with the same BOM size and cost as silicon.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—  February, 2021 — EPC announces the availability of the EPC9157, a 300 W DC-DC demo board in the tiny 1/16th brick size, measuring just 33 mm x 22.9 mm x 9mm (1.3 x 0.9 x 0.35 in). The EPC9157 demo board integrates the Renesas ISL81806 80 V dual synchronous buck controller with the latest-generation EPC2218 eGaN FETs from EPC to achieve greater than 95% efficiency for 48 V input to 12 V regulated output conversion at 25 A.  

Read more

Podcast - Spirit Behind the Screen: EPC's Alex Lidow and GaN Reliability

Podcast - Spirit Behind the Screen: EPC's Alex Lidow and GaN Reliability

In this episode, Alex Lidow and Marti McCurdy discusses EPC’s test-to-failure method in improving gallium nitride (GaN) devices. According to Alex, testing to failure has allowed EPC to tease out the exact stressors that cause failure and improve EPC’s GaN devices 10-100 times the reliability of commercial devices, and even 100 times reliability in space applications.

Alex and Marti discuss:

(1:30) Why test to fail
(4:14) Learning from failure data and stressors
(11:38) Safe Operating Area
(14:30) Mechanical stressors
(17:45) EPC Space

Listen now

Read more

Thermal Management of Chip-Scale GaN Devices

Thermal Management of Chip-Scale GaN Devices

This article discusses the challenges that thermal management raises due to increase power density, especially with chip-scale packaging (CSP). What is sometimes overlooked, however, is that CSP eGaN® power FETs and integrated circuits have excellent thermal performance when mounted on standard printed circuit board (PCBs) with simple methods for attaching heat sinks. Simulations, supported by experimental verification, examine the effect of various parameters and heat flow paths to provide guidance on designing for performance versus cost.

Bodo’s Power Systems
February, 2021
Read article

Read more

The 48 V Revolution: Why GaN Plus Digital Control for Ultra-thin Laptops

The 48 V Revolution: Why GaN Plus Digital Control for Ultra-thin Laptops

This article discusses how GaN-based solutions coupled with digital control increase efficiency, shrink the size, and reduce system costs for high density computing applications like ultra-thin laptops and high-end gaming systems. As computers, displays, smartphones and other consumer electronics systems become thinner and more powerful over the past decade, there is increasing demand for addressing the challenge of thinner solutions while extracting more power out of limited space. To address this challenge, the comparative advantages of various non-isolated DC-DC step-down topologies for ultra-thin 48 V – 20 V power solutions that are designed to fit inside a notebook computer or an ultra-thin display are examined.

Power Electronics News
January, 2021
Read article

Read more

EPC Releases Physics-Based Models That Project eGaN Device Lifetime in New Reliability Report

EPC Releases Physics-Based Models That Project eGaN Device Lifetime in New Reliability Report

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) publishes Phase-12 Reliability Report adding to the extensive knowledge found in their first eleven reports. With this report, EPC demonstrates field experience of 226 billion eGaN ® device hours and a robustness capability unmatched by silicon power devices.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— January 2021 — EPC announces its Phase-12 Reliability Report, documenting the strategy used to achieve a remarkable field reliability record. eGaN devices have been in volume production for more than eleven years and have demonstrated very high reliability in over 226 billion hours of operation, most of which are in vehicles, LTE base stations, and satellites, to name just a few applications with rigorous operating conditions.

Read more

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) to Showcase GaN Technology-Enabled Consumer Applications at All-Digital Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) to Showcase GaN Technology-Enabled Consumer Applications at All-Digital Consumer Electronics Show (CES)

Join gallium nitride (GaN) technology experts in the EPC virtual booth at CES to explore how GaN enables enhanced features and performance in consumer electronics by providing higher efficiency, smaller size, and lower cost semiconductor FET and IC solutions.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — January 2021 — Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) announced that it will demonstrate the power of eGaN® technology to boost performance in game-changing consumer applications including self-driving cars, emobility, drones, robots, and 48-volt power conversion at the All-Digital Consumer Electronics Show (CES) January 11th through the 14th.

Read more

Layout Considerations for GaN Transistor Circuits

Layout Considerations for GaN Transistor Circuits

Gallium nitride (GaN) transistors have been in mass production for over 10 years. In their first few years of availability, the fast switching speed of the new devices – up to 10 times faster than the venerable Si MOSFET – was the main reason for designers to use GaN FETs. As the pricing of GaN devices normalized with the MOSFET, coupled with the expansion of a broad range of devices with different voltage ratings and power handling capabilities, much wider acceptance was realized in mainstream applications such as DC-DC converters for computers, motor drives for robots, and e-mobility bikes and scooters. The experience gained from the early adopters has led the way for later entrants into the GaN world get into production faster. This article is the first in a series of articles discussing three topics that can help power systems designers achieve the most out of their GaN-based designs at the lowest cost. The three topics are: (1) layout considerations; (2) thermal design for maximum power handling; and, (3) EMI reduction techniques for lowest cost.

Bodo’s Power Systems
January, 2021
Read article

Read more

Intrinsic Failure Mechanisms in GaN-on-Si Power Transistors

Intrinsic Failure Mechanisms in GaN-on-Si Power Transistors

Standard qualification testing for semiconductors typically involves stressing devices at-or-near the limits specified in their data sheets for a prolonged period of time, or for a certain number of cycles. The goal of qualification testing is to have zero failures out of a large group of parts tested. By testing parts to the point of failure, an understanding of the amount of margin between the data sheet limits can be developed, but more importantly, an understanding of the intrinsic failure mechanisms of the semiconductor can be found.

IEEE Power Electronics Magazine
December, 2020
Read article

Read more

GaN Reliability Testing Beyond AEC for Automotive Lidar

GaN Reliability Testing Beyond AEC for Automotive Lidar

An automotive application using GaN power devices in high volume is lidar(light detection and ranging) for autonomous vehicles. Lidar technology provides information about a vehicle’s surroundings, thus requiring high accuracy and reliability to ensure safety and performance. This article will discus a novel testing mechanism developed by EPC to test eGaN devices beyond the qualification requirements of the Automotive Electronics Council (AEC) for the specific use case of lidar.

Power Systems Design
December, 2020
Read article

Read more
RSS
First567810121314Last