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So where is this power revolution then?

So where is this power revolution then?

Business news |
By Nick Flaherty



There has been a lot of talk about a new generation of wide bandgap semiconductors creating significant change in the industry, but is this revolution actually happening?

Revolutions of course have many contributing factors, and the tipping points are not always obvious. There have been several significant announcements at APEC that point to increasing adoption of both silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) devices in different ways, highlighting the feedback from the early adopters.

One of the key indicators is the large semiconductor companies moving into the market. Texas Instruments and Dialog Semiconductor have both had significant development programmes underway over the last year and these devices are being shown at the conference. European companies, from Infineon to Mitsubishi’s module partner Vincotech, have been delivering SiC transistors and modules in ever higher volumes. We are also seeing consolidation within the market, with Cree’s Wolfspeed division taking over Infineon’s wideband RF chip business in the US.


And of course there are several startups that have been key to pushing the technology forward. EPC, Transphorm and GaN systems are all showing reference designs that demonstrate the advantages of  GaN technologies. A key step here is the increasing level of integration, with EPC combining the driver and FET on a single die. The company will have to demonstrate the reliability of the new part, just as it has successfully done with the discrete device, but this level of integration in a production device is significant.   

But it is the moves to bridge the gap between silicon and wide bandgap that highlights the increased demand. While many drivers are optimised for silicon or for GaN, ON Semiconductor has launched a driver that can handle both. This allows designers to migrate from silicon with minimal risk, and also more easily develop a range of end products with different power points.

Then there is the drop in replacement. While the move to GaN is pitched as a way of enabling new power conversion topologies, the launch by United SiC of a drop in SiC FET as a replacement for silicon devices is significant. This allows existing designs to be upgraded quickly and easily, and even reducing costs by eliminating additional parallelised silicon MOSFETs.

That is not to say that silicon has no role to play. New power consversion topologies based on capaciiors rather than inductors are being delivered monolithially, with new DC-DC converter chips from Helix Semiconductors moving to production and pSemi delivering a ‘power supply in a package’ with these new techiques.

So in fact we are quite clearly in the middle of a revolution, it just may not be that obvious.

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