Transphorm to demonstrate 99% efficiency power switching with a 1200V GaN power transistor at ISPSD 2022
27 February 2022
Transphorm—a pioneer in and global supplier of high-reliability, high-performance gallium nitride (GaN) power conversion products— will demonstrate leading-edge R&D results from its 1200-volt GaN device at the International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD 2022), an IEEE conference in the power semiconductor industry in May.
The 1200V GaN device delivers greater than 99% efficiency and performs well against a leading SiC MOSFET of similar on-resistance. Partially funded by the ARPA-E CIRCUITS program (earlier post), Transphorm is developing the technology for electric vehicle mobility and infrastructure power systems as well as industrial and renewable energy systems.
This major milestone further strengthens Transphorm’s ability to support the broadest range of power—from 45W to 10K+ kW—across the widest range of cross-industry applications when compared to any other GaN supplier today.
The ISPSD presentation will provide detailed information of device configuration and performance analysis conducted using a hard-switched, synchronous boost half bridge topology. The initial 1200V GaN device in a TO-247 package has an RDS(on) of 70 milliohms and easily scales to lower resistance and higher power levels. Early results show notably low leakage with a breakdown voltage of greater than 1400 volts.
We aim to bring to market an ultra-high voltage, reliable GaN product that will give customers more choice when developing power systems. Our 1200-volt GaN FET will enable excellent performance with greater designability and cost effectiveness than SiC solutions. We see this as an important milestone for the GaN power electronics industry.
—Umesh Mishra, CTO and Co-founder, Transphorm
To date, commercially available high power GaN transistors generally range from 600 to 650 volts, with the only 900V GaN device available from Transphorm. Transphorm’s core product portfolio comprises normally-off 650V devices in well-known TO-XXX and PQFN packages, addressing one of the broadest range of power applications among any GaN provider in the market.
This enables customers to leverage GaN’s inherent advantages—high power density, high power efficiency, low switching loss, and lower overall system cost—while working with reliable devices that are easier to design in and drive versus alternative e-mode GaN or SiC options. Demonstrating the 1200V FET’s performance promises to expand Transphorm’s portfolio and ultimate market opportunity by supporting demanding, high performance power system applications traditionally relying on SiC solutions.
1200V GaN has been discussed within the industry for some time, but often perceived as rather difficult to achieve. As part of the ARPA-E CIRCUITS program led by the Illinois Institute of Technology, the Transphorm team has demonstrated an important breakthrough, showcasing GaN performance at the 1200-volt device node with high efficiency 800-volt switching.
—Dr. Isik Kizilyalli, Associate Director for Technology at ARPA-E
Transphorm’s 1200V FETs are expected to be available for sampling in 2023.
As I've pointed out several times already - this hopefully in the longer term won't be just about an EV's batteries: researchers at Rice University for instance have also seemed optimistic in the fairly recent past about eventually being able to replace copper windings in motors with more efficient so-called "carbon nanotube yarns".
See:
"Carbon Nanotube Yarns Could Replace Copper Windings in Electric Motors"
at:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/carbon-nanotube-yarns-set-to-replace-copper-windings-in-electric-motors
Extract:
"A staggering fact is that motors and motor driven systems account for between 43 percent and 46 percent of all global electricity consumption demonstrating that carbon nanotubes braided into wires could outperform copper. Needless to say, if electric motors could be made to run more efficiently, energy consumption would fall. With research out of Rice University back in 2011 in conducting electricity, it looked like there would soon be a new way to create those improved efficiencies. " "Building on that research, a team at the Lappeenranta University of Technology (LUT) in Finland has replaced the copper windings used to conduct electricity in electric motors with a woven material made from threads of carbon nanotubes and achieved remarkable new efficiencies in the motors: "If we keep the electrical machine design parameters unchanged and only replace copper with future carbon nanotube wires, it is possible to reduce the Joule losses in the windings to half of the present-day machine losses" said Professor Juha Pyrhönen, who has led the design of the prototype at LUT, in a press release."
Cambridge University researchers have also investigated similar and potentially highly disruptive/transformative carbon nanotube alternatives to copper windings - but there doesn't yet appear to be a massive tsunami of urgent media or Wall St. enthusiasm for the idea.
Intriguingly, the website www.Mining,com does quite frequently focus on (greener) alternatives to mining raw materials:
https://www.mining.com/researchers-make-carbon-wire-that-could-replace-copper-54552/
Paul G(EVUK)
Posted by: EVUK_co_uk | 27 February 2022 at 01:58 PM
Note that that's JUST joule losses; hysteresis, eddy current and windage losses will remain.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | 28 February 2022 at 05:36 AM