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Cambridge GaN Devices has launched its lowest ever on-resistance (RDS(on)) parts which have been engineered with a new die and new packages to deliver the benefits of GaN to high-power applications such as data centres, inverters, motor drives and other industrial power supplies. New ICeGaN™ P2 series ICs feature RDS(on) levels down to 25 mΩ supporting multi kW power levels with the highest efficiency.
ANDREA BRICCONI | CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, CGD
“The explosive growth of AI is leading to a significant increase in energy consumption, prompting data centre systems designers to prioritise the use of GaN for high-power, efficient power solutions. This new family of Power GaN ICs is a stepping stone for CGD to support our customers and partners on achieving and exceeding 100 kW/rack power density in Data Centres, required by most recent TDP (Thermal Design Power) trends for High-density computing. On the other hand, developers of motor control inverters are looking to GaN to reduce heat for smaller, longer-lasting system power. These are just two examples of markets that CGD is now aggressively targeting with these new high-power ICeGaN ICs. Simplified gate driver design and reduced system costs, combined with advanced high-performance packaging, make P2 series ICs an excellent choice for these applications.”
Incorporating an on-chip Miller Clamp to eliminate shoot-through losses during fast switching and implementing 0 V turn off to minimise reverse conduction losses, ICeGaN Series P2 ICs outperform discrete e-Mode GaN and other incumbent technologies.
The new packages offer improved thermal resistance performance as low as 0.28 K/W – again, equivalent or better than anything else currently available on the market – and the dual-gate pinout of the dual side DHDFN-9-1 (Dual Heat-spreader DFN) package facilitates optimal PCB layout and simple paralleling for scalability, enabling customers to address multi kW applications 6 with ease. The new packages have also been engineered to improve productivity, with wettable flanks to simplify optical inspection.
New P2 ICeGaN GaN power ICs are sampling now. The P2 series includes four devices with RDS(on) levels of 25 mΩ and 55 mΩ, rated at 27 A and 60 A, in 10 x 10 mm footprint DHDFN-9-1 and BHDFN-9-1 (Bottom Heat-spreader DFN) packages. In common with all CGD ICeGaN products, the P2 series can be driven using any standard MOSFET or IGBT driver.
Two demo boards feature the new P2 devices: a single leg of a 3-phase automotive inverter demo board, developed in partnership with the French public R&I institute IFP Energies , and a 3 kW totem-pole power factor correction demo board.
The new P2 series ICeGaN GaN power ICs and demo boards were unveiled publicly at the PCIM exhibition on CGD’s booth # 7 643, Nürnberg Messe, Nuremberg, Germany, 11-13th June 2024.
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices is partnering with Qorvo® to develop a reference design and evaluation kit (EVK) that showcases GaN for motor control applications. CGD aims to speed the use of GaN power ICs in BLDC and PMSM applications, resulting in higher power, highly efficient, compact and reliable systems. Qorvo is building an EVK for its PAC5556A motor/control IC that is powered by CGD’s ICeGaN™ (IC-enhanced GaN) technology.
GIORGIA LONGOBARDI | CEO, CGD
“Because ICeGaN – unlike other GaN implementations from other companies – integrates the interface circuitry but not the controller together with the GaN HEMT, it is simple to combine with highly integrated motor controller and drive ICs such as Qorvo’s PAC5556A 600 V High Performance BLDC / PMSM Motor Controller and Driver. We are delighted to partner with Qorvo to enable motor controller and driver applications to enjoy the benefits of GaN power.”JEFF STRANG | GENERAL MANAGER, POWER MANAGEMENT BUSINESS UNIT, QORVO
“Wide bandgap semiconductors such as GaN and SiC are being actively considered in various motor control applications for the power density and efficiency benefits they bring. CGD’s ICeGaN technology offers ease of use and reliability, two crucial factors for motor control and drive designers. We are excited to see the reaction of design engineers when they experience the power of GaN combined with our highly integrated PAC5556A 600V BLDC motor control solution.”GaN brings a variety of benefits, primarily lower losses, which results in higher efficiency, leading to increased power availability and less heat. This reduces the need for complex, bulky, and costly thermal management solutions, resulting in smaller, more powerful systems that have a longer life. GaN also delivers higher torque at low speeds and, therefore, more accurate control. Also, GaN allows high-speed switching, which can reduce audible noise, which is especially valued for domestic items such as ceiling fans, heat pumps, and refrigerators.
In addition to being easy to use, ICeGaN offers several other significant benefits over other GaN devices. The gate drive voltage of ICeGaN is compatible with IGBTs. Because ICeGaN integrates the Miller clamp within the GaN IC, a negative Turn-Off voltage is not required, and low-cost current drivers can be used. Finally, ICeGaN includes a useful current sense function, simplifying circuit design and reducing BOM.
The reference design is available today, and EVK RD5556GaN will be available for purchase in Q324. It will also be shown on CGD’s booth Hall 7 643 at the PCIM exhibition in Nuremberg, Germany, 11-13 June. Qorvo will also exhibit at PCIM, on booth Hall 7 406.
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) will take the opportunity afforded by PCIM, Europe’s leading power electronics exhibition and conference (Nuremberg Messe, 11-13th June) to demonstrate how the company’s product portfolio is developing to address higher power applications such as motor drives, inverters and data centres, as well as lower power, ultra-compact smart portable device adapters and chargers.
As well as introducing a new product family, and showing a selection of informative demos on its booth (Hall 7 stand 643), CGD will have a very visible presence around the show with various presentations.
- 15.00, Tuesday 11th June, Hall 9-642: Dr Giorgia Longobardi, CGD’s CEO, will formally launch the company’s latest ICeGaN™ 650V family of GaN ICs, targeting applications in the 1kW to 5kW range.
- 13.30, Tuesday 11th June, Technology Stage (Hall 7 Stand 743): CGD’s CTO, Professor Florin Udrea will take part in a panel discussion hosted by Markt & Technik editor, Engelbert Hopf.
- 14:20, Wednesday 12th June, Technology Stage (Hall 7 booth 743): Professor Udrea will be part of a panel discussion hosted by Bodo’s Power Systems, entitled ‘GaN Wide Bandgap Design, the Future of Power.’
- 14.10, Thursday 13th June, Technology Stage (Hall 7 booth 743): Di Chen, Director of Business Development & Technical Marketing, CGD, and José Quiñones Staff Applications Engineer at Qorvo will share the stage with a joint presentation ‘GaN Power ICs and Power Application Controller Optimize Performance in BLDC and PMSM Motor Drives.’
ANDREA BRICCONI | CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, CGD
“With its inherent ruggedness and reliability, our ICeGaN™ GaN ICs are perfectly suited to meet the needs of higher power applications such as data centres and inverters. Our presentations and demos and the new devices which we are launching at the show will illustrate our capabilities for these markets.CGD’s Booth (Hall 7 643) will feature reference designs, evaluation boards and demos that support the company’s existing business in chargers and adapters as well as the new higher power applications. New exhibits include:
- Very high power density (30W/in3) 140W reference design produced with the Taiwanese Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) board
- Single leg of a 3-phase automotive inverter demo board, developed in partnership with French public R&I institute, IFP Energies nouvelles
- Two half-bridge evaluation boards with new thermally-enhanced DFN package designs
- A 2.7kW totem-pole power factor correction demo board
- Qorvo motor drive evaluation kit using ICeGaN
- Demo comparing a half-bridge circuit realized using ICeGaN vs discrete e-Mode GaN
ANDREA BRICCONI | CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, CGD
“The power electronics world has swung irrevocably in favour of GaN. Visit CGD during PCIM to experience the world’s easiest-to-use GaN, so your application can benefit from GaN’s greater efficiency and higher power density now, without any design delays.”Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) announced two new packages for the company’s ICeGaN™ family of GaN power ICs that offer enhanced thermal performance and simplify inspection. Variants of the well-proven DFN style, both packages are extremely rugged and reliable.
Developed for CGD, the DHDFN-9-1 (Dual Heat-spreader DFN) is a thin, dual-side cooled package with a small, 10×10 mm footprint and wettable flanks to simplify optical inspection. It offers low thermal resistance (Rth(JC), and can be operated with bottom-side, top-side and dual-side cooling, offering flexibility in design and out-performing the often-used TOLT package in top-side and, especially, dual-side cooled configurations.
The DHDFN-9-1 package has been designed with dual-gate pinout to facilitate optimal PCB layout and simple paralleling, enabling customers to address applications up to 6 kW with ease. The BHDFN-9-1 (Bottom Heat-spreader DFN) is a bottom-side cooled package, also with wettable flanks for easy inspection. Thermal resistance is 0.28 K/W, matching or exceeding other leading devices. Measuring 10×10 mm, the BHDFN is smaller than the commonly-used TOLL package yet shares a similar footprint, hence a common layout with TOLL-packaged GaN power ICs is possible for ease of use and evaluation.
Nare Gabrielyan | Product Marketing Manager, CGD
“These new packages are part of our strategy to enable customers to use our ICeGaN GaN power ICs at higher power levels. Servers, data centres, inverters/motor drives, micro-inverters and other industrial applications are all beginning to enjoy the power density and efficiency benefits that GaN brings, but they are also more demanding. Therefore, it is essential for such applications that devices are also rugged and reliable, and easy to design in. These attributes are inherent in ICeGaN, and are supported and extended by the new packages.”
Improving thermal resistance performance has several benefits. First, more power output is available at the same RDS(on) . Devices also run at cooler temperatures for the same power, so less heatsinking is required, resulting in reduced system costs. Lower operating temperatures also lead to higher reliability and longer lifetimes. Finally, if cost is the constraint for the application, designers can use a lower cost part with a higher RDS(on) and still achieve the required power output.
The new packages will be shown for the first time publicly at the upcoming PCIM exhibition on CGD’s booth # 7 643, Nürnberg Messe, Nuremberg, Germany, 11-13th June 2024.
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) of Taiwan to solidify a partnership in developing high performance GaN solutions for USB-PD adaptors. The MoU also covers the sharing of domestic and international market information, joint visits to potential customers and promotion.
Andrea Bricconi | Chief Commercial Officer, CGD
“We are excited to partner with ITRI, an organization with a power solution research team that is very experienced in developing power solutions and holds many patents. We will be demonstrating some of their board designs at our booth at the upcoming PCIM show in Nuremberg in June. These products utilize CGD’s unique IC chip architecture and ITRI’s patented designs to achieve product size reduction, high efficiency and power density, and cost competitiveness.”
Wen-Tien Tsai | leader of Commercial Power Design team, GEL/itri
“CGD’s IC-enhanced GaN – ICeGaN – is a novel platform that improves ease-of-use, facilitates smart temperature control and enhances gate reliability. We are excited to include these benefits in our new power designs.”
According to leading WBG analysts, Yole Group, the GaN market is expected to exceed $1B, with key growth in the applications of comms power supplies, and automotive DC/DC converters and on-board chargers. However, the first commercialized product in the market to adopt GaN devices has been USB-PD adaptors, and it is this market that the first designs from the partnership will address. Specifically, the agreement covers the development of power solutions in the 140-240 W range with power densities exceeding 30 W/in3 for e-mobility, power tools, notebook and cell phone applications.
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) is addressing higher power industrial applications with its ICeGaN™ technology which has already proved itself rugged, reliable and easy-to-use in high volume consumer devices. At the APEC 2024, IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, the company is introducing new reference designs and showing demos which address the broad and diverse industrial market.
Andrea Bricconi | Chief Commercial Officer, CGD
“We are acutely aware of the increasing power requirements of industrial applications, and the need for high efficiency. For example, as the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) proliferates, the power demanded by the exponential growth in power demanded by datacentres is growing almost exponentially. Other applications, such as solar inverters, amplifiers, transport and smart mobility, process control and manufacturing are also interested in GaN and the feedback we have received is that they love the simplicity of our ‘Drive it Like a MOSFET’ approach.”
At APEC, visitors to the booth are able to see the progress that CGD is making to support both emerging and existing markets for GaN technology..
With a high power density of 23 W/in3, GGD’s 350 W PFC/LLC reference design has an average efficiency of 93%, and a no-load power consumption of 150 mW. The CrM Totem Pole PFC + Half-Bridge LLC PSU has been realised using CGD’s 650 V, 55 mΩ, H2 series ICeGaN technology, and delivers 20 V / 17.5 A output.
The result of a partnership deal struck last year with Neways Electronics, a 3 kW photo-voltaic inverter is used to boost the DC solar voltage to a stable DC link voltage. With a maximum efficiency of 99.22% due to zero-current switching, it is a perfect example of how CGD’s GaN HEMT structure is simple for engineers to use, since it employs a standard silicon controller from Analog Devices Inc.
ICeGaN has been employed by AGD Productions in its compact AGD DUET amplifier which is rated at 300W 4Ω. This is the first time the company has used a 100% GaN power transistor design for both the power stage and the amplifier.
Finally, the GaNext project, a consortium of 13 partners from three nations has delivered compact 1 kW intelligent power modules featuring integrated drive, voltage control and protection circuits using CGD’s ICeGaN.
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD), the fabless, clean-tech semiconductor company that develops energy-efficient GaN-based power devices that make greener electronics possible, will be present at the upcoming APEC 2024, IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition. In addition to having its largest ever booth at the show, the company will contribute with a number of papers including an analysis of how GaN can play a part in supporting the exponential growth in power demanded by datacentres as the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) proliferates.
GIORGIA LONGOBARDI | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, CGD:
“With datacentres now demanding 100kW per rack and predicting even more in the very near future, power system designers are looking to employ GaN devices in new architectures. At CGD we are addressing this challenge with new devices and reference designs which we will be discussing at APEC, along with many other applications where GaN can play a huge role in enabling sustainable electronics solutions that are more efficient, have high performance and are more compact.”
CGD will present three papers at APEC:
- Tuesday 27th February, 15.00-15.30 – ‘How ICeGaN™ technology can address the datacentre challenges that digitalisation brings’, with Andrea Bricconi, Chief Commercial Officer, CGD and Peter Di Maso, VP of Business Development (Americas) CGD.
- Wednesday 28th February, 09.10-09.30 – ‘Evaluation of GaN HEMT dv/dt Immunity and dv/dt induced false turn-on energy loss’, with Nirmana Perera, Application Engineer, CGD.
- Thursday 29th February, 09:45 – 10:10: ‘Monolithic integration addresses the design challenges of GaN Power devices’, with Di Chen, Director of Business Development & Technical Marketing, CGD.
On booth 1553, CGD will present a range of demos designed to showcase industry’s first easy-to-use and scalable 650 V GaN HEMT family. ICeGaN™ H2 single-chip eMode HEMTs can be driven like a MOSFET, without the need for special gate drivers, complex and lossy driving circuits, negative voltage supply requirements or additional clamping components.
Addressing the increase in power required by server and industrial applications, CGD will show a 350 W PFC/LLC reference design using ICeGaN (650 V, 55 mΩ, H2 series). With a board power density of 23 W/in3, the bridgeless CrM Totem Pole PFC plus half-bridge LLC design has a peak efficiency of 95%, (93% average) and a no-load power consumption of 150 mW.
ANDREA BRICCONI | CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, CGD:
“GaN is now accepted as a reliable and proven technology that is able to deliver high efficiency and power density simultaneously. Datacentres, with their insatiable need for power, are an obvious application for GaN, but there are many other consumer, industrial and automotive applications where GaN can also demonstrate the ability to be a disruptive technology. CGD has delivered industry’s most easy-to-use GaN technology – ICeGaN – and we are keen to share our ideas with the audience at APEC.”
Original – Cambridge GaN Devices
