EPC announces 40V to 200V enhancement mode GaN power transistors

EL SEGUNDO, USA: Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) has introduced a family of enhancement mode power transistors based on its proprietary gallium nitride on Silicon technology.

Spanning a range of 40 Volts to 200 Volts, and 4 milliohms to 100 milliohms, these power transistors demonstrate significant performance advantages over state-of-the-art silicon-based power MOSFETs. EPC’s technology produces devices that are smaller than similar resistance silicon devices and have many times 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 products are produced in a standard silicon CMOS foundry on 150mm (6 inch) 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.

Alex Lidow, EPC’s co-founder and CEO, said: “EPC’s GaN on silicon power transistors represent the first major breakthrough in power conversion technology since the development of the commercial power MOSFET. We have developed a very cost effective and reliable technology that is also very easy for anyone with power MOSFET experience to use in a way that will significantly boost their power management system performance.”

The product is priced between $0.80 and $5.00 in 1k quantities and is immediately available through Digi-Key.