Hi folks,
This article is regarding upcoming GaN or wide band gap technology. I am also attaching the links to brief application notes and short video tutorials. Go through it if you find this article interesting.
For over three decades, power management efficiency and cost showed steady improvement as innovations in power MOSFET structures, technology, and circuit topologies paced the growing need for electrical power in our daily lives. In the new millennium, however, the rate of improvement slowed as the silicon power MOSFET asymptotically approached its theoretical bounds.
Power MOSFETs first started appearing in 1976 as alternatives to bipolar transistors. These majority carrier devices were faster, more rugged, and had higher current gain than their minority-carrier counterparts. As a result, switching power conversion became a commercial reality. AC-DC switching power supplies for early desktop computers were among the earliest volume consumers of power MOSFETs, followed by variable speed motor drives, fluorescent lights, DC-DC converters, and thousands of other applications that populate our daily lives.
HEMT (High Electron Mobility Transistor) gallium nitride (GaN) transistors first started appearing in about 2004 with depletion-mode RF transistors made by Eudyna Corporation in Japan. Using GaN on silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, Eudyna successfully brought into production transistors designed for the RF market. The HEMT structure was based on the phenomenon first described in 1975 by T. Mimura et al and in 1994 by M. A. Khan et al, which demonstrated unusually high electron
mobility described as a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) near the interface between an AlGaN and GaN heterostructure interface. Adapting this phenomenon to gallium nitride grown on silicon carbide, Eudyna was able to produce benchmark power gain in the multi-gigahertz frequency range. In 2005, Nitronex Corporation introduced the first depletion mode RF HEMT transistor made with GaN grown on silicon wafers using their SIGANTIC® technology.
As shown in Figure, SiC and GaN both have a superior relationship between on-resistance and breakdown voltage due to their higher critical electric field strength. This allows devices to be smaller and the electrical terminals closer together for a given breakdown voltage requirement. GaN has an extra advantage compared with SiC as a result of the enhanced mobility of electrons in the 2DEG. This translates into a GaN device with a smaller size for a given on-resistance and breakdown
voltage.
Enhancement mode (eGaN®) transistors have characteristics very similar to the power MOSFET, but with improved high speed switching, lower on-resistance, and a smaller size than their silicon predecessors. These new capabilities, married with a step forward in high-density packaging, enable power conversion designers to reduce power losses, reduce system size, improve efficiency, and ultimately, reduce system costs. These are the early years of a great new technology.
EPC Application Note on GaN fundamentals:
http://epc-co.com/epc/Portals/0/epc/documents/product-training/Appnote_GaNfundamentals.pdf
EPC Video tutorials on GaN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZs5zM1nyA&list=PL0Nwh_j9InYyXYUff-ixuRAjpa63Z-m7j
This article is regarding upcoming GaN or wide band gap technology. I am also attaching the links to brief application notes and short video tutorials. Go through it if you find this article interesting.
For over three decades, power management efficiency and cost showed steady improvement as innovations in power MOSFET structures, technology, and circuit topologies paced the growing need for electrical power in our daily lives. In the new millennium, however, the rate of improvement slowed as the silicon power MOSFET asymptotically approached its theoretical bounds.
Power MOSFETs first started appearing in 1976 as alternatives to bipolar transistors. These majority carrier devices were faster, more rugged, and had higher current gain than their minority-carrier counterparts. As a result, switching power conversion became a commercial reality. AC-DC switching power supplies for early desktop computers were among the earliest volume consumers of power MOSFETs, followed by variable speed motor drives, fluorescent lights, DC-DC converters, and thousands of other applications that populate our daily lives.
HEMT (High Electron Mobility Transistor) gallium nitride (GaN) transistors first started appearing in about 2004 with depletion-mode RF transistors made by Eudyna Corporation in Japan. Using GaN on silicon carbide (SiC) substrates, Eudyna successfully brought into production transistors designed for the RF market. The HEMT structure was based on the phenomenon first described in 1975 by T. Mimura et al and in 1994 by M. A. Khan et al, which demonstrated unusually high electron
mobility described as a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) near the interface between an AlGaN and GaN heterostructure interface. Adapting this phenomenon to gallium nitride grown on silicon carbide, Eudyna was able to produce benchmark power gain in the multi-gigahertz frequency range. In 2005, Nitronex Corporation introduced the first depletion mode RF HEMT transistor made with GaN grown on silicon wafers using their SIGANTIC® technology.
As shown in Figure, SiC and GaN both have a superior relationship between on-resistance and breakdown voltage due to their higher critical electric field strength. This allows devices to be smaller and the electrical terminals closer together for a given breakdown voltage requirement. GaN has an extra advantage compared with SiC as a result of the enhanced mobility of electrons in the 2DEG. This translates into a GaN device with a smaller size for a given on-resistance and breakdown
voltage.
Enhancement mode (eGaN®) transistors have characteristics very similar to the power MOSFET, but with improved high speed switching, lower on-resistance, and a smaller size than their silicon predecessors. These new capabilities, married with a step forward in high-density packaging, enable power conversion designers to reduce power losses, reduce system size, improve efficiency, and ultimately, reduce system costs. These are the early years of a great new technology.
EPC Application Note on GaN fundamentals:
http://epc-co.com/epc/Portals/0/epc/documents/product-training/Appnote_GaNfundamentals.pdf
EPC Video tutorials on GaN:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxZs5zM1nyA&list=PL0Nwh_j9InYyXYUff-ixuRAjpa63Z-m7j
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