21Dianyuan Webinar - 1700 V GaN Setting New Standards
Will SiC Survive The Emergence of Super-High Voltage GaN?
As the world’s decarbonization efforts expand to a forecasted annual investment of $5 Trillion per year
by 2030 [source: IEC], the role of power semiconductors and associated systems has grown in
importance for power generation, transmission and consumption, covering applications such as wind
and solar, electric transportation of all kinds, datacenters, lighting and consumer products. Over the last
50 years the technology for high voltage, high current power switches morphed from thyristors to IGBTs
and is now transitioning to so called “wide bandgap” materials – the most commercially consequential
of which is silicon carbide. But in addition to being important, silicon carbide is also relatively easy to
make and a rather obvious ploy for big semiconductor companies. Consequentially, a very large amount
of capacity has come online over the last 5 years and the world is oversupplied with the material.
It’s likely that the world-wide return on investment in silicon carbide will not improve because new
technologies are snapping at its heels – gallium nitride is one such disruptive technology. Not only is
GaN better than SiC at a performance level, it’s also cheaper to make because it does not require high
temperature processing and so the equipment needed is cheaper and the foundry electric bill is much
lower. GaN’s one weakness has been its breakdown voltage performance, which limited the technology
to consumer products and mains-power applications such as cellphones chargers, TVs and appliance
bias supplies. Until now. Power Integrations is on an accelerated R&D path to replace SiC with high
voltage GaN, and to replace SiC with high voltage GaN, has released 750V, 900V and 1250V GaN based
products in recent years and hinted at even higher voltage R&D in progress. This paper explains at a high
level what GaN’s capabilities are vs. SiC and IGBT and proposes a commercial roadmap for the
technology into the future.
