Page 27 - PEN eBook October2023

SEMICONDUCTORS

The State of GaN

Adoption

By Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC)

What are the factors impacting gallium nitride’s adoption across a wide range of power management
applications? In this article, we will explore the feedback that EPC has received from customers
we have visited over the last 13 years that the company has been in volume production. Hundreds
and hundreds of customers have both adopted EPC’s GaN devices and given feedback as to what
difficulties they have had along the way:
▶ Will the tiny GaN devices perform in circuits as well as larger silicon MOSFETs?
▶ How easy is it to use a device that’s 10× smaller than the MOSFET it replaces?

▶ Are the devices reliable?
▶ Does GaN cost more?

Let’s first look at where GaN is used today. The pie chart in Figure 1 shows a breakdown of EPC’s
revenues in 2022 by market segment. As you can see, the largest segment is space. Over 100,000
GaN units were sent up into space between low Earth orbit and geosynchronous orbit in 2022. In
2023, we expect over 200,000 units to be sent into space.

The second-largest segment is automotive and e-mobility, another very demanding application. The
third most utilized segment is enterprise computing—usually very demanding, particularly at the
high end. And the fastest-growing application is solar, in which changes in topology for residential
solar installations are driving rapid growth.

60 OCTOBER 2023 | www.powerelectronicsnews.com