Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) introduces the EPC9059 half-bridge development board for high current, high frequency point-of-load (POL) applications using eGaN ICs to reduce power conversion size.
The EPC9059 development board has a 30 V maximum device voltage with a 50 A maximum output current. In this application two 30 V EPC2100 eGaN IC's operating in parallel with a single onboard gate driver to achieve higher output currents. GaN devices have superior current sharing capability compared to silicon MOSFETs, making them more attractive for parallel operation.
The total system efficiency of this board operating with 12 V input to 1 V output with a switching frequency of 1 MHz peaks near 90%. It runs with natural convection and no heatsink up to 32 A, and at heavy load condition of 40 A showed a 2.5% efficiency advantage over silicon based DrMOS solutions, which translates to an almost 20% reduction in total system power loss.
This board demonstrates how eGaN technology enables smaller size, higher efficiency, and higher power density at the higher frequencies and higher currents required in next generation point-of-load converters