GaNの話

In my 40 years’ experience in power semiconductors I have visited thousands of customers, big and small, on every continent except Antarctica. When the issue invariably turns to the packaging of the power semiconductor – transistor, diode, or integrated circuit – the requests for improvement fall into six categories:

1. Can you make the package smaller?
2. Can you reduce the package inductance?
3. Can you make the product with lower conduction losses?
4. Can you make the package more thermally efficient?
5. Can you sell the product at a lower price?
6. Can you make the package more reliable?

eGaN^® FETs and integrated circuits from EPC have taken a very different approach to packaging power semiconductors – we have ditched the package altogether!

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:

In March 2010 Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) proudly launched our GaN technology at the CIPS conference in Nuremberg, Germany.  Parts and development kits were readily available off-the shelf and therefore designers could immediately get started with a new state-of-the-art semiconductor technology.

At that time, we listed four key attributes we believed a new semiconductor technology needed in order to be really disruptive to the end markets.  A lot has happened in the six years since.  GaN has continued to ascend as the presumptive replacement for the aging power MOSFET, yet there are still a few design engineers and technical managers that remain skeptical.  So let’s look again at these four key attributes and see where GaN stands in addressing them.