New Industry Products

GaN Widens the Performance Gap with the Silicon MOSFETs

July 10, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the introduction of six new-generation power transistor products and corresponding development boards. Ranging from 30V to 200V, these products provide significant reduction in RDS(on) greatly increasing their output current capability in applications such as high power density dc-dc converters, Point-of-Load (POL) converters, synchronous rectification in dc-dc and ac-dc converters, motor drives, LED lighting, and industrial automation.

The new family of eGaN FETs cuts on-resistance (RDS(on)) in half, enabling high current, high power density applications. The latest generation of eGaN FETs cuts the hard-switching FOM in half compared with the previous generation for improved switching performance in high-frequency power conversion applications. The new devices extend the performance benefits of GaN to 30-V enabling higher-power applications. And they offer increased temperature capabilities and improved die layout improve the thermal and electrical performance of the Gen 4 family of devices allowing for higher-power operation under all conditions.

To demonstrate the improved performance of these new eGaN FETs, two buck converters were built. The EPC9018 combines the 30-V EPC2023 FET as the synchronous rectifier with the 40-V EPC2015 as the control switch of a 12-V to 1.2-V dc-dc point of load (POL) converter.

The 12-V to 1.2-V, 40-A POL converter operating at switching frequency of 1 MHz achieved efficiencies above 91.5% and demonstrated the superior in-circuit performance of the latest generation of eGaN power devices compared to the state-of-the-art Si MOSFET modules.

The EPC9019, a 48-V to 12-V converter, uses the 80-V, EPC2021 as the synchronous rectifier switch with the 100-V EPC2001 as the control switch. The results of this 48-V to 12-V, 30-A non-isolated dc-dc intermediate bus converter operating at a switching frequency of 300 kHz achieved efficiencies above 98%, again significantly outperforming a comparable converter using state-of-the-art silicon power MOSFETs. The EPC9018 and EPC9019 development boards are also available for easy “in circuit” performance evaluation.

To simplify the evaluation process of the latest high performance eGaN FETs, development boards are available to support easy “in circuit” performance evaluation of each new product being introduced (reference table given above). These boards include all the critical components on a single board that can be easily connected into any existing converter.

The EPC9014 and EPC9031 through EPC9034 development boards are half-bridge configurations with onboard gate drives, featuring various eGaN power transistors. All boards are 2” x 1.5” and contain two eGaN FETs using the Texas Instruments LM5113 gate driver, supply and bypass capacitors. Each board contains all critical components and layout for optimal switching performance.

Pricing for the EPC2019-24 power transistors at 1K units starts at $3.14 each and are available for immediate delivery from Digi-Key. Pricing for corresponding development boards start at $104.40 each and are also available for immediate delivery from Digi-Key.