New Industry Products

97% Efficient 48V-to-12V POL with Monolithic GaN Half-Bridge

April 15, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) announces the EPC2104, 100-V enhancement-mode monolithic GaN transistor half bridge. By integrating two eGaN® power FETs into a single device, interconnect inductances and the interstitial space needed on the PCB are eliminated, resulting in a 50% reduction in board area occupied by the transistors. This increases both efficiency (especially at higher frequencies) and power density, while reducing assembly costs to the end user's power conversion system.

With the new 100-V EPC2104 half bridge, a point-of-load (POL) system efficiency of a complete 48V-to-12V buck converter using the EPC2104 is greater than 97% at 22A, switching at 300 kHz, and approaching 97% at 22A when switching at 500 kHz. The EPC2104 comes in a chip-scale package for improved switching speed and thermal performance, and is only 6.05 mm x 2.3 mm for increased power density. The EPC2104 is designed for high frequency dc-dc conversion and motor drive applications.

The EPC9040 is 2” x 2” and contains one EPC2104 integrated half-bridge component using the Texas Instruments LM5113 gate driver, supply and bypass capacitors. The board has been laid out for optimal switching performance and there are various probe points to facilitate simple waveform measurement and efficiency calculation.

The EPC2104 monolithic half-bridge price for 1K units is $8.31 each. The EPC9040 development boards are priced at $137.75 each. Both are available for immediate delivery from Digi-Key.