After a few trips back to the Innoscience stand, ipXchange finally got a chat with Dennis to talk us through the many reference designs they had on display at PCIM. For those who don’t know, Innoscience specialises in GaN technology, and they are likely the World’s largest GaN supplier – at the very least they are the most noteworthy company for supplying low- and high-voltage GaN in high volume for production runs.
The first design that Dennis showed us uses Innoscience’s 650 V GaN devices. This 3-phase multi-level convertor demonstrates the use of 650 V GaN for reliable 800 V applications supporting up to 11 kW. Innoscience will be releasing this reference design soon for evaluating this technology in industrial and automotive applications, as well as for solar inverters.
Other highlights of the stand were a 2 kW totem-pole PFC PSU and a half-bridge LLC, both much smaller than silicon-equivalent designs, which is enabled by the increased power density afforded by GaN. These exhibit 80 plus titanium efficiency for datacentre, telecom, and lighting applications. There was also a 4 kW bigger-brother PFC convertor for similar applications; this used the 650 V device with 30 mΩ RDS(On).
Last, but not least, we cover some compact DC/DC convertors that use Innoscience’s 100 V 7 mΩ and 3.2 mΩ devices. These reference designs exhibit power densities of >2000 W/in3. There is also brief mention of a 1000 W option that instead uses Innoscience’s SolidGaN, a key innovation that operates without external GaN drivers; we can’t wait for more information to become available so that we can write about this!
Dennis signs off with exactly why you should consider Innoscience’s GaN in your design:
- Build smaller, more efficient power supplies
- More easily available in volume than GaN from other suppliers
- The right price for making GaN a widely used technology