6 June 2013

Nitronex extends capabilities with family of ceramic- and plastic-packaged 48V power transistors

Nitronex LLC of Durham, NC, USA, which designs and makes gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-on-Si)-based RF power transistors for the defense, communications, broadband and industrial & scientific markets, has developed a family of products based on a new 48V GaN-on-Si process technology.

The NPT2000 Series discrete HEMT devices support power levels of 12, 25, 50 and 100W, and are available in both plastic and ceramic packages. Targeting defense and high-volume commercial markets, the devices address the competing requirements of lower cost and higher performance.

“These products provide higher gain, higher efficiency, and wider bandwidths for defense and commercial applications,” says president & CEO Greg Baker. “We see many interesting opportunities with our core customer and market base with the 48V ceramic package offering, and even more opportunities with the lower-cost plastic package line,” he adds. “Our thermally enhanced plastic package offering will allow us to be very price competitive in new commercial markets for GaN such as land mobile radio and small-cell base stations.”

Nitronex says that development of the NPT2000 Series 48V discrete HEMT product family is the culmination of three efforts:

• iterative design improvements based on Nitronex’s 28V product line, enhancing ruggedness, thermal performance and breakdown voltage;

• expanded product range by including low-cost, easy-to-use plastic packages for all devices, from the lowest to highest power; and

• extensive eliability testing, qualifying the new 48V operating voltage.

The new family of products includes the NPT2010 and NPT2020 (with output powers of 100W and 50W, respectively) housed in AC360 ceramic packages, the NPT2018 and NPT2019 (with output powers of 12W and 25W) housed in 3x6 DFN plastic packages, and the NPT2021 and NPT2022 (with output powers of 50W and 100W) in industry-standard TO272 plastic packages.

Samples are available now, with full production scheduled for third-quarter 2013.

Nitronex is exhibiting in booth 1522 at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS 2013) in Seattle, WA, USA (4-6 June).

Tags: Nitronex GaN-on-Si RF power transistors

Visit: www.nitronex.com