The following is a listing (with links for the full story) of the most-read Industry News stories on PowerPulse.Net for 2015, thus providing a window into the "pulse" of the trends and interests in the Power Electronics Industry. This is the fourth article in the series, which will conclude tomorrow.
#20: 600V / 120A GaN Transistor has 75mOhm On-Resistance
HiPoSwitch (High Power Switch), an EU group-project, has successfully developed high-efficiency gallium nitride power switches. Eight European institutional and industrial project partners led by the Ferdinand-Braun-Institut, Leibniz-Institut fuer Hoechstfrequenztechnik (FBH) have developed prototype power transistors that use gallium nitride (GaN) in enhancement mode. more
#19: GaN enables 96.7% Efficient 500-Watt Eighth-Brick
Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) introduces the EPC9115, a demonstration design for a 12V, 42A output with an input range of 48V to 60V. The demonstration board features enhancement-mode (eGaN®) power transistors – the EPC2020 (60 V) and EPC2021 (80V) – along with the LM5113 half-bridge driver and UCC27611 low side driver from Texas Instruments. The power stage is a conventional hard-switched 300 kHz isolated buck converter. more
#18: Researchers Driving Down the Cost of GaAs
Compared with other semiconductor materials, silicon has a crushing commercial advantage. It is roughly a thousand times cheaper to make. As a result, gallium arsenide (GaAs) based devices are only used in niche applications where their special capabilities justify their higher cost. Cellphones, for instance, typically rely on speedy gallium arsenide chips to process the high-frequency radio signals that arrive faster than silicon can handle. Now Stanford University researchers have invented a manufacturing process that could dramatically reduce the cost of making GaAs electronic devices and thus open up new uses for them, notably inside solar panels. more
#17: GaN Goes Mainstream with Bloomberg Business Article
The current issue of "Bloomberg Business" includes an article titled "The Semiconductor Revolutionary" that discusses how the founder of Efficient Power Conversion, Alex Lidow "has spent much of his career developing a superefficient replacement for silicon." The article begins with the observation, "Silicon has enjoyed some serious staying power. For going on 60 years, it's been the semiconductor of choice at the heart of transistors—the tiny switches that power the Information Age. A valley has been named after it. Many billion-dollar empires have been forged from it. And now—look away, silicon—it may finally be on the verge of being replaced." more
#16: Delta to use Transphorm GaN Power in EV Charger
Just one day following the announcement by Yaskawa Electric Corporation that it is employing GaN power devices from Transphorn, Inc. in the production of world's smallest power conditioner in its class, Delta Products Corporation (DPC) announced their cooperation with Transphorm and participation in a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) $3.0 million award for the development of a high-efficiency, high-density, 6.6kW bidirectional on-board charger for plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs). The on-board charger will use novel designs based on GaN power switches that target energy efficiency better than 95% and reduce volume and mass by 30% to 50% compared to today's technology. more
#15: Cree aims to Disrupt SiC Market with APEI Acquisition
Cree, Inc. announced the acquisition of Arkansas Power Electronics International, Inc. (APEI) Combining two highly complementary innovators, the acquisition enables Cree's Power and RF business to extend its leadership position and help to accelerate the market for high-performance, best-in-class SiC power modules. Dr. Alex Lostetter, former president and CEO of APEI will become the Vice President of the newly-formed Cree Fayetteville, Inc. more
#14: Vicor and SynQor Split Recent Decisions in Patent Dispute
On April 24, 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, D.C., issued an order denying the petition by SynQor, Inc. for panel rehearing of the Court's March 13, 2015, decision invalidating certain claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,072,190, which SynQor has asserted against Vicor Corporation and Cisco Systems, Inc. in litigation currently pending in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The Federal Circuit's March 13th decision reversed a prior decision of the United States Patent and Trademark Office's Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) that had found the same claims patentable in an inter partes reexamination proceeding initiated by Vicor. The Federal Circuit's April 24th order confirms its earlier ruling that prior art anticipated key claims of the '190 patent and may render the remaining claims invalid as obvious. more
#13: IEEE seeks Papers on Energy Efficiency and SDPAs for 5G Wireless
The IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC) will be publishing a special Issue on "Energy-Efficient Techniques for 5G Wireless Communication Systems" in early 2016. Each issue of J-SAC is devoted to a specific technical topic and thus provides to J-SAC readers a collection of up-to-date papers on that topic. One of the most urgent and critical challenges in the design of 5G wireless communication systems is that of mitigating their energy consumption in light of a greatly increased data rate. Indeed while it has now been some years that the topic of energy-efficient design of communication networks has gained a prominent role, due to both economic reasons and environmental concerns on sustainable growth, it is expected that in the 5G era, with millions more base stations and billions of connected devices, the topic of "software-defined power architectures" (SDPAs) will be even more compelling. more
#12: Panasonic 600V GaN Devices to be offered in Infineon Packages
Infineon Technologies AG and Panasonic Corporation have announced an agreement under which both companies will jointly develop GaN devices based on Panasonic's normally-off (enhancement mode) GaN-on-silicon transistor structure integrated into Infineon's surface-mounted device (SMD) packages. In this context Panasonic has provided Infineon with a license of its normally-off GaN transistor structure. This agreement will enable each company to manufacture high performing GaN devices. Customers will have the added advantage of having two possible sources for compatible packaged GaN power switches: a setup not available for any other GaN on silicon device so far. Both parties have agreed not to disclose any further details of the contract. The first output from this cooperation will be a 600V 70mΩ device in a DSO (Dual Small Outline) package. more
#11: Dielectric with 3X Higher Thermal Conductivity than Cu
Litecool has produced LED packages using a new dielectric material that has a thermal conductivity of 1000 W/mK – 3-times higher than copper (Cu) and 30-times better than alumina ceramic. Dielectrics are used within LED packages to isolate electrical tracks but they hinder the thermal path causing the LED to overheat. Mid-lower, low-cost LED packages use plastic as the main dielectric material. High-power, high-cost LED packages use ceramics such as alumina as the dielectric. This new material, Black X™, has a thermal conductivity 30-times higher than alumina. more
