Power Up

In this episode, our guest is Guy Moxey, Senior Director of Power Products at Wolfspeed, A Cree company. Guy Moxey has spent his entire career in the power semiconductor industry with various roles in applications, product marketing and product line management. We speak with him about different aspects of Silicon Carbide, in particular devices and packaging.

In this episode, our guest is Justin Kolbe, Henkel’s Director of Market Strategy for Power and Industrial Automation within the company’s Adhesive Technology business unit. A chemical engineer by training, he has extensive experience in thermal management solutions and electronic materials development and processing. We speak with him about different aspects of Power Conversion and its Thermal Management for different markets.

In this episode, our guest is Simon Wood, Senior Director of RF Product Development and Applications at Wolfspeed, A Cree company. During his caree, Simon has designed amplifiers using SiC and GaN HEMT devices. We speak with him about different aspects of Gallium Nitride (GaN) for RF applications, the main topics are GaN-on-SiC and GaN HEMT.

Power electronics has undergone an interesting change towards new Wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors (WBG). Significant impact factors for the growth of the WBG semiconductor market include the growing demand for improved energy efficiency and increased demand for long-life batteries.

In power electronics, gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) wide bandgap semiconductors are used as a solution to slow down Silicon in high temperature and high power segments.

GaN device manufacturers’ rapid progress in material and process technologies has resulted in significant improvements in both performance and cost of products for several applications.

In this podcast our focus is to go in deep toward GaN with Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of EPC, Efficient Power Conversion, and Dinesh Ramanathan CEO & co-founder (co- faunder) of NexGen Power Systems Inc.

Wide-bandgap semiconductor materials offer devices the ability to operate at high voltages, temperatures, and frequencies. As the demand for these electronic devices is proliferating, the demand for wide-bandgap semiconductors tends to increase steadily. GaN is a high bandgap material that allows devices to operate at higher temperatures and withstand higher voltages compared to silicon.

GaN transistors are significantly faster and smaller than silicon MOSFETs. The performance of GaN shows that efficiency and performance have improved significantly, leading to several new applications that were not possible with silicon technology.

Moreover, GaN’s higher dielectric breakdown allows building thinner and therefore, lower resistance devices. Lower characteristic RDS(on) leads to smaller devices with lower capacitance. Vertical GaN devices are capable of switching at higher frequencies and operating at higher voltages.

Vertical GaNis capable of operating at high breakdown voltage which enables Vertical GaN to power the most demanding applications, like Data Center Server power supplies, Electric Vehicles, solar inverters, motors, and high-speed trains.