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Gallium Nitride Integration: Going Where Silicon Power Can't Go [Expert View]
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Lidow, Alex |
| Copyright Year | 2018 |
| Abstract | In the late 1970s, when I was a young research and development engineer working on early power metal– oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), our group was given the challenge of integrating several power devices to form a monolithic half-bridge that could be used in a variable-speed motor drive. We quickly discovered the difficulty of integrating multiple silicon (Si) power devices into a monolithic component because of the migration of minority carriers from one power device to the next. Solving the problem involved expensive technology. The economics did not work, and our group refocused on discrete transistors. Forty years later, and with the fast developments in gallium nitrideon-Si (GaN-on-Si) technology, multiple power devices can now be monolithically integrated economically. It has been more than eight years since discrete GaN-on-Si power devices hit the off-the-shelf commercial market as replacements for aging Si power MOSFETs. New applications, such as LiDAR and envelope tracking, have benefited from the faster switching speeds and small size of GaN devices. More recently, mainstream applications, such as 48–12-V dc–dc converters, have adopted GaN-on-Si, and their prices have achieved near parity with mature MOSFETs. But this is just the beginning for GaN-on-Si. Figure 1 shows the relative die size of Si power MOSFETs versus the last two generations of enhancement-mode GaN (eGaN) FETs produced by the Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC). Even with the current superior performance of GaN over Si, the fifth-generation GaN devices, launched in 2017, are still 300 times larger than their theoretical limit. For comparison, in 1978, International Rectifier introduced power MOSFETs that were state of the art yet were still 300 times away from the Si theoretical limit. It took about 20 years for power MOSFETs to hit the theoretical line. GaN technology is on pace to strike the theoretical limit in less time! GaN-on-Si transistors are lateral devices (the current flow is parallel to the surface of the transistor) as compared with power MOSFETs, which are vertical-conduction devices. Therefore, GaN-on-Si has the advantage of easy integration of multiple power devices that can be electrically isolated from each other. In 2014, EPC demonstrated this capability with a family of monolithic halfbridge products, starting with the EPC2100. Not only was it possible to integrate economically, but the combination of two power devices took less chip area than the individual |
| Starting Page | 70 |
| Ending Page | 72 |
| Page Count | 3 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1109/mpel.2018.2850738 |
| Volume Number | 5 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://xplorestaging.ieee.org/ielx7/6570649/8458270/08458281.pdf?arnumber=8458281 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
