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Panasonic 600V GaN power transistor is ultra stable

The company's gallium nitride transistors contribute to saving energy and are more compact than other similar devices. They are also suited to a variety of power switching systems for industrial and consumer applications
Panasonic has developed a GaN-based power transistor with a blocking voltage of 600V, which enables stable switching operations.

The company started the shipment of evaluation samples in March, 2013 and says failure-free operations of its 600V GaN power transistors have been confirmed for the first time.



Panasonic 600V transistors

These transistors have three main features.

The first is normally-off gate injection transistor on a 6-inch silicon substrate.

Power switching systems require normally-off operations of the transistors for safe operations.
Lowering the cost of the substrate is also a major bonus for the GaN transistors to be practically used. Panasonic has solved these issues by its novel normally-off Gate Injection Transistors (GITs) on silicon substrates.The firm’s proprietary technologies for the epitaxial growth of GaN by MOCVD enables the fabrication of GaN transistors on a 6 inch silicon substrate.
The p-type gate of the GIT greatly helps to reduce the on-state resistance taking advantages of the conductivity modulation by the hole injection from it.

The second benefit is that stable switching operation is free from what is known as “current collapse.”

So far, the increase of the on-state resistance after the application of high voltage, or current collapse, has been a serious problem for the commercialisation of GaN transistors. Panasonic says the increase of the on-state resistance is the greatest obstacle to achieve the stable operations of the transistors. The origin of the collapse is believed to be trapped electrons under a high electric field. The firm also says that it reduces the number of the traps by its novel processing technologies, in addition to new device structures relieving the electric field. The fabricated GIT on silicon enables stable 600V operations free from the current collapse.

The final advantage is that the structure enables highly efficient switching at high frequencies.

The lateral structure of the GIT is better for high speed switching owing to the lower parasitic capacitance than that in conventional silicon-based power transistors with the vertical structures.
Here, RonQg (Ron: on-state resistance, Qg: gate charge) is a figure-of-merit for high speed switching. The fabricated GIT exhibits a RonQg one thirteenth lower than that by the state-of-the-art silicon MOS transistors indicating the superior potential. Panasonic also demonstrate 1MHz operation of resonant LLC DC-DC converters at high efficiency over 96 percent by using the GITs on silicon. This demonstration indicates that the presented GIT on silicon can be used for practical systems free from operation failure.

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