A new DC-DC converter from Renesas Electronics includes a GaN-on-silicon power transistor made by GaN Systems.

The GS61008P is a 100 V enhancement-mode power transistor that provides a 46% reduction in system size, according to GaN Systems.

Renesas’s new DC-DC bidirectional converter is designed for 48 V mild hybrid vehicles and electric motorcycles, and includes an automatic phase drop function, an ISL78226 PWM controller and a half-bridge driver.

“A combination of GaN with the automatic phase drop function achieves highly efficient power conversion even at low loads, exceeding 94% power efficiency over a wide load range of 400 W to 3 kW,” says GaN Systems. “The half-bridge driver ISL78420/444 provides an easy and cost-effective method of driving GaN transistors.” GaN Systems says the converter enables “a 46% reduction of the PCB area by leveraging the excellent switching capabilities of GaN Systems’s transistors—enabling a high-efficiency power converter with a high switching frequency of 500 kHz. This allows the use of very small 1.3 µH inductors, which leads to a significant decrease in size and weight.”

Source: GaN Systems