Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductor designer and manufacturer Transphorm plans to demonstrate R&D results from its 1,200 V GaN Field-Effect Transistor (FET) at the upcoming International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and ICs (ISPSD), and expects to have samples available in 2023.

Designed for EVs, infrastructure power systems, industrial applications and renewable energy systems, the the 1,200 V FET comes in a TO-247 package, and has an RDS(on) of 70 milliohms. The company says it is scalable to lower resistance and higher power, and produces more than 99% efficiency in power switching.

“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 1,200-volt device node with high-efficiency 800-volt switching,” said Associate Director for Technology at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Dr. Isik Kizilyalli.

Transphorm also says the GaN FET has advantages over silicon carbide (SiC) alternatives. “Our 1,200-volt GaN FET will enable excellent performance with greater designability and cost-effectiveness than SiC solutions,” said Transphorm CTO and co-founder Umesh Mishra.

The company will rely on a hard-switched, synchronous boost half-bridge topology to provide a performance analysis and information on the FET at ISPSD.

Source: Transphorm