雜談GaN技術

新興的計算應用需要更強大的功能和更小的外形尺寸。除了伺服器市場日益增長的需求外，一些最具挑戰性的應用是多用戶遊戲系統、自動駕駛汽車和人工智慧。這些應用正在產生對DC-DC轉換器的需求，這些轉換器可以在接近處理器的位置擠進主板。

計算和電信市場的迅速擴展對於中間匯流排轉換器的需求變得越來越小型化、高效和高功率密度。LLC諧振轉換器是一個提供高功率密度和高效率解決方案的出色候選者。eGaN® FETs 具有超低的導通電阻和寄生電容，能顯著降低使用矽MOSFET時的損耗，這對LLC諧振轉換器非常有利。使用eGaN FETs（如EPC2053 和 EPC2023）的48 V到6 V、900 W、1 MHz LLC DC到DC變壓器（DCX）轉換器，展示了峰值效率達98.1%，特定功率為48 W/cm2 (308 W/in2)，功率密度為69 W/cm3 (1133 W/in3)。

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. 

The demand by our society for information is growing at an unprecedented rate. With emerging technologies, such as cloud computing and the internet of things (IoT), this trend for more and faster access to information is showing no signs of slowing. What makes the transfer of information at high rates of speed possible are racks and racks of servers, mostly located in centralized data centers.

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: