CGD demos ICeGaN for industrial applications
Company takes its ‘Drive it like a MOSFET’ philosophy to APEC 2024
At APEC 2024, IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition, Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) is addressing higher power industrial applications with its ICeGaN technology, introducing new reference designs and showing demos for this market.
Andrea Bricconi, CCO, said: “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 data centres 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.”
GGD’s 350 W PFC/LLC reference design, for example, has a power density of 23 W/in3, with an average efficiency of 93 percent, 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.
A partnership deal struck last year with Neways Electronics, resulted in a 3 kW photo-voltaic inverter for boosting the DC solar voltage to a stable DC link voltage. With a maximum efficiency of 99.22 percent 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.
ICeGaN has also 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 percent GaN power transistor design for both the power stage and the amplifier.
The GaNext project, a consortium of 13 partners from three nations, for example, has delivered compact 1 kW intelligent power modules featuring integrated drive, voltage control and protection circuits using CGD’s ICeGaN.
