APEC is The Premier Global Event in Applied Power Electronics

Preparations are well underway for EPC to head to Houston for the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC). The team is excited to be back, in-person exhibiting a large variety of demonstrations showcasing how the superior performance of GaN is transforming the delivery of power across many industries, including computing, communications, and e-mobility.

Here’s a sneak peek at some of the key application areas we will be showcasing in Booth 1302 at APEC.

Mobility is a driving factor in all economies. Electro mobility (or e-Mobility) is a clean and impactful way of keeping the gears of commerce grinding without contributing to the environmental stresses of inefficient motors or fossil fuel burning engines that cause damage to our planet. There is an ever-increasing demand for highly efficient and compact motor drive designs. EPC’s GaN-based motor drive reference designs for eMobility applications are in development to jump-start the competitive and environmentally friendly alternatives that support this trend.

車用48 V/12 V評估電源模組（EPC9137、EPC9163、EPC9165等）採用兩相同步降壓/升壓拓撲結構。邊緣連接器和控制卡還設計為兩個模組與控制器並聯操作，有效地實現四相，從而使額定電流和功率翻倍。使用EPC9137模組的示例如圖1所示。

This GaN Talk blog discusses the advantages of using GaN-based inverters instead of silicon-based inverters for motor drive designs to operate smoother while reducing size and weight. These advantages are critical for motor drives used in typical applications such as warehousing & logistical robots, servo drives, e-bikes & e-scooters,  collaborative and low voltage robots and medical robotics, industrial drones, and automotive motors.

Omdia forecasts that worldwide shipments of warehousing and logistics robots will grow rapidly over the next 5 years from 194,000 units in 2018 to 938,000 units annually by 2022, with the rate of growth slowing after 2021 as many major players will have adopted robotic systems by then.  Worldwide revenue for this category will increase from $8.3 billion in 2018 to $30.8 billion in 2022, providing significant opportunities for established participants and emerging players.

Until recently, to achieve high-quality sound from an audio amplifier cost thousands of dollars and relied on a large, heavy, power-hungry class-A amplifier. Now, the advent of gallium nitride FETs and ICs is ushering the age of high quality, lower cost class-D audio amplifiers. 

Distortion Performance Issues Lowered with GaN

Historically, meeting the required distortion performance targets (THD+N, TIM and IM) for high-quality audio, class-D amplifiers had to resort to incorporating large amounts of feedback circuitry to compensate for poor open-loop performance. The source of this distortion was the silicon power MOSFET.

Guest GaN Talk Blog by: Pavel Gurev, Sinftech Rus LLC

This article originally appeared in Bodo’s Power Systems April 2021

In the past few years, gallium-nitride (GaN) FETs have become more widespread in power electronics. Due to their outstanding characteristics, GaN FETs play an increasingly important role in miniaturization of the switching converters with very high-power densities exceeding 100 W / cm³ and more. The efficiency of converters based on GaN transistors can reach 99.5%. Due to the extension of the conversion frequency towards the MHz range, the magnetic components (chokes, transformers) also decrease in size significantly. However, designers face numerous challenges in implementing practical GaN transistor designs. The best family members are presented in wafer-level chip-scale package; the drivers are also quite miniature.

Co-written by Steve Colino

Laser drivers for light distancing and ranging (lidar) are used in a pulsed-power mode. What are the basic requirements for these laser drivers?

A new family of integrated laser driver ICs meets all these requirements.  The first release, the EPC21601 laser driver IC, integrates a 40 V, 10 A FET with integrated gate driver and 3.3 V logic level input in a single chip for time-of-flight (ToF) lidar systems used in robotics, surveillance systems, drones, autonomous cars, and vacuum cleaners. This chip offers frequency capability up to 200 MHz in a low inductance, economical, 1 mm x 1.5 mm BGA package.

Power electronics engineers are constantly working towards designs with higher efficiency and higher power density while maintaining high reliability and minimizing cost. Advances in design techniques and improved component technologies enable engineers to consistently achieve these goals. Power semiconductors are at the heart of these designs and their improvements are vital to better performance. In this EPC space blog, we will demonstrate how GaN power semiconductors allow for innovation in the harsh radiation environments of space applications.

GaN power semiconductors offer designers in the high reliability market a sudden and significant improvement in electrical performance over their silicon power MOSFET predecessors. Table 1 compares radiation hardened GaN and Si power semiconductor device characteristics important for circuit designers to increase efficiency and power density in their converter.

Rethinking the Ordinary and Overcoming Mental Biases

Motor drive applications span several markets: industrial, appliance, and automotive. A commonality that occurs regardless of market is that when a new technology is proposed, it faces resistance to its adoption; after all, it is human nature to stick with what is known and resist change.

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) is increasing the performance distance between the aging silicon power MOSFET and eGaN transistors with 100 V ratings.  The new fifth-generation “plus” devices have about 20% lower R_DS(on) and increased DC ratings compared with the prior fifth-generation products.  This performance boost comes from the addition of a thick metal layer and a conversion from solder balls to solder bars.