GaN Power Transistors Rated at 200V

Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) has introduced a family of enhancement mode power transistors based on its proprietary gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon technology. Spanning a range of 40V to 200V, the power transistors demonstrate significant performance advantages over state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs and feature superior switching performance. Applications that benefit from this newly available performance are DC/DC power supplies, point-of-load converters, class D audio amplifiers, notebook and netbook computers, LED drive circuits, telecom base stations, and cell phones, to name just a few.

EPC’s enhancement mode (normally OFF) GaN technology was explicitly developed to replace power MOSFETs. The devices are produced in a standard silicon CMOS foundry on 150mm silicon wafers. The use of this low-cost infrastructure has allowed EPC to price the initial product offerings aggressively in order to accelerate the conversion from silicon power MOSFETs.

This new technology is ready for commercial use. EPC has posted to its web site, www.epc-co.com, results from the most extensive reliability testing ever performed on GaN power devices as well as a battery of application notes, SPICE models, demo boards, and development kits.

EPC