Transphorm ships over half a million GaN power devices for multi-kW-class applications

Transphorm Inc of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, CA, USA — which designs and manufactures JEDEC- and AEC-Q101-qualified 650V gallium nitride (GaN) field-effect transistors (FETs) — says it has shipped more than 500,000 high-voltage GaN FETs.

Customers in the broad industrial, infrastructure & IT and PC gaming markets have publicly announced in-production devices built with Transphorm’s GaN technology, illustrating the rising confidence in GaN solutions, says the firm.

In fact, industry analyst firm IHS Markit Technology (now a part of Informa Tech) forecasts that total GaN power discrete, module and system IC revenue will reach $1.2bn by 2028 (‘SiC & GaN Power Semiconductors Report’, May 2019). About $750m of that (almost two-thirds of the total market) will be driven by high-voltage GaN solutions.

“We came to market with the most robust, two-chip normally-off device at a time when the industry was more familiar with single-chip normally-off silicon MOSFETs,” says Transphorm’s co-founder & chief operating officer Primit Parikh. “As proven by our public momentum and also that of other reputable manufacturers like Power Integrations in the consumer adapter space, the two-chip normally-off GaN solution is the most practical high-voltage GaN FET design today,” he adds. “In fact, it’s this design that enables Transphorm’s GaN to deliver high performance with strong robustness, which has led to more than 5 billion hours (with <2 FIT) of field reliability data to date.”

Transphorm says that its adoption continues to be driven largely by the quality and reliability (Q+R) of its products, which is backed by its robust normally-off GaN platform, strong control of its epitaxial process, and manufacturing capability — positioned to meet the volume and quality requirements of various cross-industry markets from consumer adapters to automotive.

“Following our success in the core higher-power markets targeted by GaN, we’re also working with customers in fast-growing markets that are underserved by silicon such as consumer adapters and set-top boxes,” says Philip Zuk, VP of worldwide technical marketing & North American sales. “Consider that the majority of products we’ve shipped to date were targeted for higher-power applications. Those 500,000-plus 650V FETs equate to more than 4 million lower-power (sub-100W) FETs, demonstrating our volume production capabilities.”

A year ago, Transphorm released the first complete set of validation data for high-voltage GaN power semiconductors. The firm has now formally released its latest field reliability data. With more than 5 billion hours in the field, Transphorm’s GaN technology currently has a <2.0 FIT rate at <19.8 PPM per year.

Tags: Transphorm GaN-on-Si GaN HEMT Power electronics

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