EL SEGUNDO, Calif-January 3, 2012 — The National LM5113 from Texas Instruments has been honored with an Electronic Products’ Product of the Year award. The editors of Electronic Products — a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers — evaluated thousands of products launched in 2011. The winning products were selected on the basis of innovative design, significant advancement in technology or application and substantial achievement in price and performance.

The LM5113 is the industry’s first driver designed specifically for enhancement mode gallium nitride FETs. Enhancement-mode GaN FETs enable new levels of efficiency and power density compared to standard metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) due to their low on-resistance (Rdson) and gate charge (Qg) as well as their ultra-small footprint, but driving them reliably presented new challenges. National’s LM5113 driver integrated circuit (IC) overcomes these challenges, enabling power designers to realize the benefits of GaN FETs in a variety of popular power topologies.

"We congratulate Texas Instruments on this prestigious award," said Alex Lidow, co-founder and CEO for Efficient Power Conversion Corporation. "The release of the LM5113 bridge driver has been instrumental in accelerating the adoption of our eGaN® FETs by offering designers a true plug and play solution. The LM5113 bridge driver unlocks the efficiency capability of eGaN FETs, enabling designers to achieve new performance benchmarks in power and system density."

http://www2.electronicproducts.com/Driving_GaN_FETs_becomes_reality-article-poypo_TI_NatSemi_jan2012-html.aspx

We know Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) has commercialized enhancement-mode GaN-on-Si FETs, or eGaN FETs as EPC calls them, for more than a year now. Concurrently, it has been working with partners to realize dedicated drivers for its eGaN FETs, which offer lower RDS(ON) at higher voltages, lower gate charge, and no reverse recovery loss (QRR)—all these properties from a smaller die size than silicon. In essence, by comparison to silicon MOSFETs, the eGaN FETs offer a dramatic reduction in figures of merit or FOM.

By Ashok Bindra
How2Power
June, 2011

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GaN (Gallium-Nitride) FETs appear poised to eat into silicon FETs market share as switching devices for high-voltage power conversion circuits.

By Margery Conner
EDN
June 20, 2011

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National Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE:NSM) today introduced the industry’s first 100V half-bridge gate driver optimized for use with enhancement-mode Gallium-Nitride (GaN) power field-effect transistors (FETs) in high-voltage power converters. Enhancement-mode GaN FETs enable new levels of efficiency and power density compared to standard metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) due to their low on-resistance (Rdson) and gate charge (Qg) as well as their ultra-small footprint, but driving them reliably presents significant new challenges. National’s LM5113 driver integrated circuit (IC) eliminates these challenges, enabling power designers to realize the benefits of GaN FETs in a variety of popular power topologies.

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