Why gallium nitride

The inductance and capacitance scale down in proportion to the frequency — a 10X increase in frequency produces a 10X decrease in the capacitance and inductance. This can result in an enormous decrease in weight and volume, as well as cost.

In addition, higher frequency can result in less acoustic noise in motor drive applications. High frequency also enables wireless power transfer at higher powers, more spatial freedom and bigger transmit to receive airgaps. View Our Product Line. Broadest product line, highest currents, robust design. Leading brands in power-reliant industries.

LinkedIn Youtube Twitter Facebook. And adding to the photonics story, GaN is also deployed in blue lasers most notably those used to read discs in Blu Ray players. Outside of photonics, while GaN transistors were demonstrated in it was around that that the first GaN HEMT high electron mobility transistor transistors became commercially available. These were typically used in RF infrastructure applications that needed their high efficiency, high-voltage capabilities.

A few years later, in , saw the promotion of GaN MOSFETs formed on a silicon substrate — though adoption was minimal due to circuit complexity and lack of high-frequency eco-system components. Navitas Semiconductor was formed in with a mission to enable a high-speed revolution in power electronics by providing GaN power ICs that can deliver the benefits of this wide bandgap WBG technology to the widest possible range of applications. In the same year the company announced that it had been issued with over patents in gallium nitride devices and applications.

Navitas has continued to develop its family of GaNFast power ICs, which, unlike most Si and earlier discrete GaN devices, are provided in very small, low-profile, surface-mount QFN packages eliminating speed-limiting, lossy discrete drive and protection circuits, and shrinking printed circuit PCB area. By 1st April, , Navitas has shipped 18,, gallium nitride power ICs with zero failures.

Gallium nitride has long been used in the production of LEDs and RF components but is now moving to mainstream acceptance in a growing number of power switching and conversion applications. Here GaN-based ICs can address demands to improve system performance and efficiency, save space and deliver reliable operation at higher temperatures.

Indeed, the largest market for power GaN is currently in mobile fast charging where GaN power ICs can enable three times faster charging in adaptors that are half the size and weight of slow, silicon-based designs. The consolidation of data center hardware, a new HVDC architecture approach and the proven reliability of mass-production, highly-integrated GaN power ICs enable major improvements in efficiency.

In the automotive industry, gallium nitride is becoming the technology of choice for power conversion and battery charging in hybrid and electric vehicles. GaN-based power products can also increasingly be found in the inverters employed by solar power installations and in the power conversion schemes of motor drive and other industrial applications. This, in turn, determines the electric field that the solid is able to withstand. Fortnite Game of Thrones Books. Comics Music. Filed under: Featured Videos Science Tech.

Gallium nitride is the silicon of the future. Linkedin Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. Next Up In Science. Sign up for the newsletter Verge Deals Subscribe to get the best Verge-approved tech deals of the week. Just one more thing! Please confirm your subscription to Verge Deals via the verification email we just sent you. GaN semiconductors also take up less space on circuit boards, making it possible to manufacture ever-smaller electronic appliances.

Cost is another key factor. It is possible to grow gallium nitride crystals on top of silicon, so they can be produced in existing silicon manufacturing facilities and do not require costly specialized production sites. As far as semiconductor devices go, GaN appears to tick all the boxes.

Yet despite its widespread use in a variety of industries, there are still several applications that it has yet to master. There is also the fact that electronic circuitry typically requires both depletion-mode and enhancement-mode transistors. However, workarounds for this issue have already been developed and it is surely only a matter of time before GaN semiconductors will appear in even more products and industries.

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