NEWS ANALYSIS
Rocky road to real power conversion
The market-ready high voltage GaN-on-silicon power device has been a long time coming. Compound Semiconductor asks Venture-Q’s Zel Diel if the industry will deliver soon.
IN 2010, ZEL DIEL, managing director of US-based power electronics analyst business, Venture-Q, started investigating how and when GaN-on-silicon devices for power conversion applications would be commercialised. Within months, he had concluded that by 2016 industry would see high-voltage FETs in low quantities so designers could use them to build demonstration systems. These structures would be deposited on 200 mm silicon wafers to achieve an acceptable cost parity with silicon alternatives.
Nearly four years on and having just unveiled his latest report on commercialization strategies for GaN-on-silicon power devices, Diel’s time-frame has shifted. “We’re not so far off now. By 2018 system designers will be able to say, yes, I can buy [HEMTs] for $5 or $6 and at a system level cost parity,” he says.
Still, the road to true commercialisation is going to be rocky. As Diel asserts, time and time again, market research forecasts, largely relying on vendors’ unrealistic product availability timetables, have underestimated the challenges GaN-on-silicon developers face and proven optimistic.
While Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), US, introduced the first commercially available low voltage GaN-on-silicon HEMT nearly four years ago, this company and every other vendor has since struggled to deliver commercially-viable high voltage − 600 V − devices. EPC has repeatedly pushed back delivery of high voltage devices and the only generic 600 V GaN-on-silicon HEMT device publicly introduced by Transphorm has been offered to select partners under non-disclosure agreements.
So why the slow progress? For starters, myriad industry infrastructure constraints exist. “We are dealing with a completely different technology in a system level design
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net January / February 2014
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