In this article, the author introduces a GaN FET compatible analog controller that yields a low bill-of-material count and give designers the ability to design a synchronous buck converter in the same simple way as using silicon FETs, and offers superior performance for 48 V power systems.

Power Electronics News
April, 2021
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氮化鎵電晶體和積體電路通過消除輸入濾波器中的電解電容，以提高馬達控制應用的功率密度。氮化鎵元件的卓越開關性能可消除死區時間且實現無與倫比的正弦電壓和電流波形，從而實現更平滑且沒有雜訊的操作。

Bodo’s Power Systems
2021年4月
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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) announces that the EPC2152 ePower™ Stage IC has received the 2020 Elektra Award for Semiconductor Product of the Year (Analogue).

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— March 2021 — EPC’s ePower™ stage, EPC2152 Integrated Circuit (IC), has been honored with an Elektra Award 2020 in the Semiconductor Product of the Year – Analogue category. The award presentation was announced on March 25^th during a virtual awards ceremony hosted by Electronics Weekly. 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. Judging is carried out by an independently and unbiased, diverse, and knowledgeable panel of industry experts.

宜普電源轉換公司（EPC）宣佈擴大氮化鎵（GaN）積體電路（IC）系列，實現性能更高、更小巧且採用飛行時間（ToF）技術的雷射雷達應用，包括機器人、無人機、3D感測器，遊戲和自動駕駛汽車等應用。

宜普電源轉換公司（EPC）宣佈推出雷射驅動器IC（EPC21603），在單個晶片上集成了40 V、10 A 場效應電晶體、閘極驅動器和LVDS邏輯電平輸入，面向飛行時間（ToF）雷射雷達系統，用於機器人、無人機、擴增實境和遊戲等應用。

氮化鎵技術發展迅速，在開發出多代全新離散元件後，具備更高效、更小尺寸和成本更低等優勢的新世代積體電路繼續崛起。氮化鎵積體電路讓產品可以更小型化、開關更快、更高效且更易於設計。

Power Systems Design
2021年3月 (第36-39頁)
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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
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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.

New family of laser driver IC products will enable faster adoption and increased ubiquity of ToF solutions across a wider array of end-user applications.

How2Power
March, 2021
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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. 

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
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宜普電源轉換公司（EPC）推出氮化鎵（GaN）積體電路（IC）系列，實現性能更高、更小巧且採用飛行時間（ToF）技術的光達應用，包括機器人、無人機、3D感測器和自動駕駛車輛等應用。

宜普電源轉換公司（EPC）宣佈推出雷射驅動器IC(EPC21601)，在單個晶片上集成了40 V、10 A 場效應電晶體、閘極驅動器和3.3 V邏輯電平輸入，面向採用飛時測距（ToF）技術的光達系統，用於機器人、監控保安系統、無人機、全自動駕駛車輛和吸塵器。

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.

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
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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
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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 1/16^th 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.  

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

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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
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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
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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.

The combination of MPS (Monolithic Power Systems) controllers with ultra-efficient eGaN^® FETs from EPC (Efficient Power Conversion) enable best-in-class power density of 1700 W/in³ in high efficiency, low cost LLC DC-DC Conversion