IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - June 2022 - 85

unless adopting special designs (which compromise
the device performance under normal operation).
All GaN commercial HEMTs cannot withstand
>10-μs SC at a bus voltage higher than 300 V;
this fundamentally limits their applications in EV
powertrain applications (current 400 V bus voltage,
future 800 V bus voltage). Only Vertical GaN
has demonstrated >10 μs SC capability at voltages
exceeding its breakdown voltage [Figure 2(b)].
To fully utilize this power device, NexGen has
OUR MAIN
COMPONENT
IS TRUST
developed a power platform called Merlin Power
Engine (Figure 3) that incorporates innovative
power management algorithm, including software
controllable proprietary controller, advanced
magnetics and thermal management, allowing
Vertical GaN to switch at frequencies above 1 MHz.
This novel, scalable, software-configurable power
platform can scale across different wattages to
deliver power systems for a wide variety of applications,
ranging from computing to datacenters
and electric mobility.
About the Author
Dr. Dinesh Ramanathan co-founded NexGen
Power Systems in 2017. Prior to co-founding NexGen,
Dr. Ramanathan was the CEO of Avogy Inc.
where he oversaw the development of vertical
GaN technology. He also served as the executive
vice president at Cypress Semiconductor for
almost 9 years, where he managed the Programmable
Systems Division and the Data Communications
Division.
In addition, he held senior marketing and
engineering positions at Raza Microelectronics,
Raza Foundries, an incubating venture capital
company and Forte Design Systems, an electronic
design automation company. He started his
engineering career at Synopsys, Inc. Dr. Ramanathan
holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in Information
and Computer Science from the University of
California, Irvine, USA. He also holds an M.S. in
Mathematics and a B.E. in Computer Science
from BITS, Pilani, India. He has been awarded
two patents.
References
[1] J. Liu et al., " 1.2 kV Vertical GaN Fin JFETs with robust avalanche
and fast switching capabilities, " presented at the 2020
IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), 2020, pp.
23.2.1-23.2.4, doi: 10.1109/IEDM13553.2020.9372048.
[2] R. Zhang, J. Liu, Q. Li, S. Pidaparthi, A. Edwards, C. Drowley,
and Y. Zhang, " Breakthrough short circuit robustness
demonstrated in vertical GaN Fin JFET, " IEEE Trans. Power
Electron., vol. 37, no. 6, pp. 6253-6258, Jun. 2022, doi: 10.1109/
TPEL.2021.3138451.
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