We have repeatedly noted that power supplies are becoming βour everythingβ. Mobile electronics, electric vehicles, the Internet of things, energy storage and much more brings the process of power supply and voltage conversion to the first position in electronics. The technologies for the production of chips and discrete elements using materials such as (GaN). At the same time, no one will dispute the fact that integrated solutions are better than discrete solutions both in terms of compactness of solutions and in terms of cost savings for design and production. The other day at the PCIM 2019 conference, researchers from the Belgian center Imec clearly that single-chip power supplies (inverters) on GaN are not science fiction at all, but a matter of the near future.
Using the technology of gallium nitride on silicon on SOI (silicon on insulator) wafers, Imec specialists created a single-chip half-bridge converter. This is one of the three classic options for turning on power switches (transistors) to create voltage inverters. Usually, a set of discrete elements is taken to implement the circuit. A set of elements to achieve a certain compactness is also placed in one common package, which does not negate the fact that the circuit is assembled from separate components. The Belgians managed to reproduce almost all the elements of a half-bridge on a single crystal: transistors, capacitors and resistors. The solution made it possible to increase the efficiency of voltage conversion by reducing a number of parasitic phenomena that usually accompany conversion circuits.
In the breadboard shown at the conference, an integrated GaN-IC chip converted an input voltage of 48 volts to an output value of 1 volt with a PWM frequency of 1 MHz. The solution may seem quite expensive, especially considering the use of SOI plates, but the researchers emphasize that the high degree of integration more than offsets the costs. Manufacturing inverters from discrete components will be more expensive by definition.
Source: 3dnews.ru