This gallery is part of the TechXchange: Gallium Nitride (GaN).
The unique physical and electrical properties of gallium nitride (GaN) help facilitate higher levels of power density compared to standard silicon MOSFETs and IGBTs that have long dominated power systems. As it belongs to a new class of wide-bandgap semiconductors, GaN can handle 10X higher breakdown voltages than silicon, while it beats out silicon efficiency in resonant converters.
GaN touts higher electron mobility than silicon, which means lower on-resistance (RDS(on)) for power FETs when turned on, and thus, they experience less conduction loss. Due to the higher electron mobility and decreased parasitic capacitance, GaN power FETs can run at high switching frequencies along with very large voltage transients (dV/dt). Consequently, they also have a high slew rate during turn-on and turn-off, limiting switching loss.
GaN is increasingly at the heart of fast chargers and power adapters that can pump out up to hundreds of watts of power at a time—sufficient to increase the rate of battery charging or charge a smartphone, laptop, and tablet all at once. But the power-handling properties of GaN are also relevant to many other markets from solar inverters, industrial motor drives, and data centers to onboard chargers in EVs.
That became even more evident as everyone from Texas Instruments and Infineon Technologies to GaN Systems and Transphorm rolled out new GaN power solutions at APEC and PCIM 2023.