The next wave of Gallium Nitride

An article by Maurizio Di Paolo Emilio from Power Electronics News, with Ahmed Ben Slimane, PhD, Technology & Market Analyst, Compound Semiconductors and Emerging Substrates and Poshun Chiu, Technology & Market Analyst specializing in Compound Semiconductor and Emerging Substrates, both from Yole Développement (Yole) – At PCIM – this year in digital version – several companies are showing their latest innovations. The GaN power market doubled in 2020 according to Yole report, highlighting the impressive growth of smartphone fast chargers and leading the way for telecom and automotive markets.

“In the new GaN Power 2021: Epitaxy, Devices, Applications and Technology Trends report, in the consumer market, GaN enjoyed a successful year in 2020 thanks to several companies, such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, Samsung, Realme, Dell and LG, as well as other Chinese aftermarket companies that adopted GaN technology,” said Ahmed Ben Slimane, PhD, Technology & Market Analyst, Compound Semiconductors and Emerging Substrates and Poshun Chiu, Technology & Market Analyst specializing in Compound Semiconductor and Emerging Substrates at Yole Développement (Yole).

Yole expects the GaN consumer power supply market to be the main driver representing more than 60% of market share in 2026. The total GaN device market is forecast to grow from US$46 million in 2020 to around US$1.1 billion in 2026 with a CAGR of 70%. “GaN is critical to helping meet energy efficiency initiatives, including the EU Lot 9 requirements for Titanium efficiency power supply units,” said Paul Wiener, VP of Strategic Marketing, GaN Systems.

Alex Lidow, CEO at EPC, highlighted three particular devices: EPC9146, EPC9137, EPC9149. “The EPC9146 is a 400 W motor drive demonstration. GaN provides the fast switching, small size, and low cost needed to further reduce the size and weight of BLDC motors, reduce audible noise, improve torque for faster reaction times, and increase efficiency. The EPC9137 is shown at PCIM for a GaN-based 3 kW 48 V to 12 V DC-DC converter. The higher switching frequency of GaN results in a solution that is 35% smaller, it results in 10 W lower inductor DCR losses, and it reduces the cost of the system by about 20% over the MOSFET solution. The EPC9149 is a 1 kW eGaN FET-based LLC resonant converter in the 1/8th power brick size for 48 V server applications. Silicon-based solutions need to be in the ¼ brick format to reach 1 kW! The EPC9149 1 kW LLC resonant converter achieves 97.6% peak efficiency and 96.5% full-load efficiency,” said Lidow.

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