With the exhaustion of fossil energy and the rise of green industry, new energy vehicles have become the main development trend in the future. According to the official introduction of GaNPower, the switching speed of this series of GaN power devices is 10 times that of silicon carbide power devices, which is very suitable for building electric vehicle chargers and motor-driven power converters, thereby improving the cruising range of electric vehicles and reducing carbon emissions. .

Under the development trend of "dual carbon", energy conversion efficiency has become the focus of attention from all walks of life. According to the public information of the National Bureau of Statistics, the total electricity consumption of urban and rural residents in 2020 will be 1,094.9 billion kWh, and the average annual electricity consumption of a single household will be 780 kWh. Taking a 1% increase in energy conversion efficiency as an example, the country can save 10.95 billion kWh every year, and a single family can save 14 million years. Converted to electric vehicle mileage, Model S can be charged 168 million times, with a mileage of 67.2 billion kilometers, which shows the importance of improving conversion efficiency.

What does gallium nitride do to "double carbon"?

The focus of "Double Carbon" is to solve energy problems, and the focus of energy is electricity. As a representative of high conversion efficiency and wide bandgap semiconductor materials, gallium nitride is of great significance in power transmission and distribution, electricity consumption, energy storage and other links. The low switching loss characteristics make GaN power devices more conducive to energy saving and emission reduction, and the high frequency characteristics also promote the development of systems to high power density. Gallium nitride has become a driving force for the development of the green economy. In the context of "double carbon", gallium nitride gradually meets more industries.

Gallium nitride has the characteristics of high optical efficiency, high power, high frequency, high temperature resistance, and the volume of gallium nitride is smaller than that of silicon-based products under the same power. Driven by carbon neutrality and carbon peak, it is fully applied in lighting, motor drive, data center, automobile, landscape electricity storage and other fields. It plays an important role in building an efficient energy system and controlling the total amount of fossil energy.

Reduce costs and increase operating voltage, gallium nitride continues to accelerate

With the exhaustion of fossil energy and the rise of green industry, new energy vehicles have become the main development trend in the future. However, after years of development, the potential performance of AON7403 silicon power semiconductors has reached a bottleneck, and more efficient power semiconductor materials are needed to improve the performance of new energy vehicles. Gallium nitride meets this requirement in terms of high efficiency, low energy consumption, and high power density.

Although GaN power devices integrate various high-performance features, there are still some problems in automotive applications. According to the current technical level and material properties of gallium nitride, gallium nitride power devices are mainly used in medium and low voltage fields below 800V, and there is a certain gap with the high voltage demand of automotive inverters.

In April this year, the Belgian IMEC research laboratory passed 1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model"> 1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200V model">1200VGaN-on-QST extension technology, the successful integration of gallium nitride The operating voltage is increased to 1200 V. This technology mainly adds a thicker extended GaN buffer layer for horizontal transistors on a 200mm QST substrate, which can be used for 1200V automotive applications, and improves the hard breakdown voltage of GaN power devices through this technology To 1800V, it breaks the shackles of thinking that gallium nitride is only suitable for medium and low voltage applications, and greatly improves the stability of power devices.

According to Denis Marcon, senior business development manager at IMEC, the most critical point of this power device is that the COMS process can be mass-produced in a 200mm wafer fab, which has a great cost advantage.

After verification, high-voltage gallium nitride is expected to become the first choice for switching power supplies

In October this year, GaNPower officially showed the first 1200V single-chip E-type gallium nitride power device to the outside world, and verified the power switch on the 7A/800V double-pulse test board. This series of chips provides two packaging methods to meet different application requirements. GPIHV30DFN adopts 8*8DFN built-in lead package, and GPIHV30DP5L adopts TO263-5 package. Since the GPIHV30DFN adopts the DFN package, GaNPower sets the SD creepage distance to 2.8mm to maintain a sufficient safety distance to ensure the reliability of the power device switching under high voltage. At the same time, the GPIHV30DP5L package adopts GaNPower's unique patented design, which adds Kevin wiring and small input capacitance to the device to reduce surge voltage.

This series of chips is rated for 1200V breakdown. In order to ensure the stability of the chip operation, GaNPower has added a voltage margin of 150V in the chip design to avoid transient peak breakdown of components during operation. At the same time, the on-resistance Rds of this series of chips is 60Ω, which reduces system losses and improves system conversion efficiency through low on-resistance.

In automotive applications, the DC bus voltage of the car is usually between 700~800V, and the rated voltage of the power device needs to reach 1200V. This series of chips just meet this requirement. According to the official introduction of GaNPower, the switching speed of this series of GaN power devices is 10 times that of silicon carbide power devices, which is very suitable for building electric vehicle chargers and motor-driven power converters, thereby improving the cruising range of electric vehicles and reducing carbon emissions. .

As the GaN market gradually expands, more and more manufacturers are entering the market with lower-priced GaN-on-silicon. With the upgrade of the process, the rated working voltage of gallium nitride is expected to become the first choice for the working voltage of 20V to 1200V.

In October, GaNSystems and EPowerlabs jointly launched the DC48-1K DC/DC converter based on GaN 48V mobile applications.

The DC48-1K is a 48VDC/DC power converter for consumer, industrial and automotive applications. GS61008P adopts Ganstems100V gallium nitride power transistor GS61008P, GS61008P adopts patented IslandTechnology and GanPX package, among which IslandTechnology technology can improve the current flow of the chip. GanPX technology can miniaturize chips, reduce parasitic parameters of the system, reduce switching losses by 50%, improve system conversion efficiency, and maximize power utilization.

According to the official website data, the DC input voltage range of DDC48-1K is 24V~60V, and the rated output power can be as high as 1000W. The conversion efficiency of the system can be maintained above 95% under normal working conditions, and can be increased to 97.5% when running at full load, which is 4% higher than the efficiency of similar converters. At the same time, through the high efficiency and small size of gallium nitride, the power converter increases the power density of the device to 28W/in3 by compressing the volume to 1/3 of the traditional converter, solving the physical problem of small space in mobile applications. limit. In terms of weight, due to the use of a caseless design and the high efficiency based on gallium nitride, the amount of components is greatly reduced, the product weight is only 345g, and the cold air DC/DC power converter of the same power weighs about 750g, which is more than DDC48-1K. light.

GaN power converters are highly efficient, high power density, and lightweight, making them ideal for optimizing the power systems of electric vehicles, industrial electric transportation equipment, and robots, improving energy utilization, and achieving the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction.

Epilogue

In the context of "double carbon", the scale of green energy industries such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaic inverters, and charging piles continues to expand, and the market demand for high-efficiency power equipment has increased significantly. As the operating voltage of gallium nitride increases, the application field has also expanded. In addition, low-cost silicon-based gallium nitride has entered the market, and gallium nitride has become a possibility to replace high-cost silicon carbide, and the market has huge room for growth.