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Cree pushes GaN power density past 30 W/mm

Cree has developed GaN power transistors with power densities almost three times higher than previously reported.
Cree has announced the development of GaN HEMTs with a record CW power density of 32 W/mm and 55% power added efficiency (PAE) at 4 GHz.

The same devices produced a CW power density of 30 W/mm and 50% PAE at a higher frequency of 8 GHz.

Crediting proprietary breakthroughs in GaN epitaxy, device processing, and device structure, Cree has demonstrated gallium nitride HEMT power transistors with

Cree claims that the figures represent an almost three-fold improvement in power density, together with a 5-point improvement in PAE, compared with GaN transistors previously demonstrated in the industry.

The company says that the performance is due to proprietary breakthroughs in GaN epitaxy, device processing, and device structure, which allow the devices to be operated at a high drain bias of 120 V. This helps to achieve the extremely high power density figures.

Cree’s R&D teams in Durham, North Carolina and at the company’s Santa Barbara Technology Center in California developed the devices on programs that were funded in part by both the Office of Naval Research (ONR), as well as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

With its much higher power density over conventional GaAs HEMTs, GaN had already demonstrated the potential to become a dominant device technology for future commercial and military systems, said John Palmour, Cree s executive VP of Advanced Devices. “Achieving a power density over 30 W/mm, however, launches this technology into an entirely different realm," he said.

Recently, Fujitsu also announced excellent results for its GaN HEMT amplifiers, which achieved a record power output of 174 W at 63 V (see Fujitsu smashes GaN HEMT power record).

Jim Milligan, Manager of Wide Bandgap RF Products stated "Cree has been actively developing this technology for use in applications from UHF through mm-wave. In addition to developing discrete GaN transistors, we also envision offering GaN MMICs as a logical extension to our SiC MMIC foundry service announced earlier this year.”

The company offers GaN MMIC prototyping services on 3 inch wafers to US customers interested in evaluating potential performance improvements using the technology.

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