GaN power devices technology
IR slashes GaN manufacturing costs
GaN power devices are smaller and more efficient than equivalents made from silicon. But significant commercial success will only follow when their manufacturing costs fall, a goal that can be realized by turning to production on 150 mm silicon CMOS processing lines, writes Michael Briere on behalf of International Rectifier.
T
here is a downside to the rising standard of living throughout the world: increased energy
consumption. This is expected to go up by more than one third over the next twenty years, according to the US Energy Information Association.
But it doesn’t have to be like this, because there are many ways to reduce the amount of energy needed to power applications. One opportunity is to introduce electric motors into transportation, to either replace or work in tandem with an internal combustion engine. This can deliver energy savings of 60 percent.
Similarly, it is possible to slash the power consumption of consumer appliances by 50 percent by replacing AC induction motors with inverter-driven, permanent magnet motors. And energy savings can also result from switching to electronic-ballasted forms of lighting and improvements in the delivery of electronic loads, especially for the growing IT infrastructure.
Grasp all these energy saving opportunities and global energy consumption could plummet by a quarter, trimming $2 trillion off of the world’s annual electricity bill (assuming that a barrel of oil costs $45). It is a staggering financial saving, which dwarfs the globe’s yearly spend on power electronics, $50 billion.
These energy savings can be realized by substantial, optimized and intelligent power electronics for driving various loads. In principle, this form of power electronics is already available, but it could take another decade before prices fall far enough for consumers to buy products incorporating this technology for reducing global energy consumption.
One way to speed this adoption is to increase the performance of modern power electronics, while cutting its cost. Power-converter sub-systems offer the most fertile ground for the uptake of this technology, and improvements have already enabled increasingly dense and efficient working loads.
Figure 1: IR’s GaN-on-silicon epitaxial process produces HEMTs with a two-
dimensional electron gas Hall mobility typically exceeding 2000 cm2/Vs
Employing these power conversion systems is most attractive when they combine affordability with efficient handling of dense loads. The last 40 years has witnessed significant improvements in these three attributes – density, efficiency and cost – gains that have arguably been dominated by refinements in the power devices that they use. Similarly, manufacture of a radically improved power switch could spur a revolution in power electronic architectures and systems.
At International Rectifier we have been developing a technology capable of delivering this step-change: the GaNpowIR platform. Here GaN-on-silicon epitaxy is combined with device fabrication processing on 150 mm substrates, using a standard, modern, silicon CMOS manufacturing line that has been subjected to little modification to equipment or process discipline.
Displacing the silicon incumbent Commercial success demands taking market share from the incumbent technology, the silicon power FET. This device has been serving customers for 30 years, and has enabled widespread adoption of switch-mode power supplies. These have surpassed the linear regulator as the dominant power architecture. Alongside the power FET, another mainstay of the power electronics market is the
August / September 2010
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