IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - 16

1 MW+
Electric Vehicle Inverters

Application Power

100 kW

Traction

Wind
Turbines

Utility

Commercial
Solar String
Inverters

10 kW

On-Board Battery
Charges and dc/dc
Converters

Server Industrial Drives,
Power Welders, Uninterruptible
Power Supply, Inverters

1 kW
MicroInverters

GaN
(Lateral)

LED
Lighting

100 W

Laptop
Adapters

Mobile
Wireless Power

Smartphone,
Tablet Chargers

Class-D
Audio

10 W
30 V

SiC
(Vertical)

TV, Game
Players

100 V

300 V

600 V

Device Voltage (V)

1,200 V

3,300 V

6,500 V+

FIG 1 The lateral GaN addresses traditional Si FET applications with vertical SiC replacing Si IGBTs. (Figure used courtesy of Navitas
Semiconductor.)

requirements in the 650-900-V range. Lateral GaN replaces
Si FETs nicely over a range of applications that require
breakdown voltages of 100-650 V. Lateral GaN offers the
highest switching speed and lowest switching losses, and
it will enable frequencies to increase well above 1 MHz in
many applications. Figure 1 shows how the silicon market
can be overtaken by WBG GaN and SiC material.
For lateral GaN, a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG)
with aluminium gallium nitride (AlGaN)/GaN heteroepitaxy
structure, as seen in Figure 2, gives very high mobility in the
channel and drain drift region. A 2DEG is the result of the
difference in bandgap voltage between the two layers, which
induces a quantum well at the interface. This well collects

2,500
Drain
Dielectric

Ohmic

Gate
III-N
2°

AlGaN Barrier
GaN Buffer
Transition Layer
Silicon Substrate

3.0

2,000
Mobility (cm2/Vs)

Source

3.5

2.5
1,500

2.0
1.5

1,000
Mobility (cm2/Vs)
EBR Field (MV/cm)

500

Si

4H-SiC
(b)

FIG 2 (a) A lateral GaN-on-Si device construction. (b) A material comparison of Si versus SiC, GaN.

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

z	September 2016

0.5
0.0

0

(a)

16

1.0

GaN

EBR Field (MV/cm)

about 20 V/nm, but it is still well short of the bandgap limit of
about 300 V/nm. This leaves substantial room for generational improvements in lateral GaN devices in the future.
SiC has shown excellent capability to operate at voltages
well above 1 kV and even above 10 kV in some applications
[4]. It is optimal for higher power applications [replacing
silicon insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs)] which
can exploit the vertical structure for lowest resistance
and benefit from the greatly reduced switching losses. At
lower voltages, SiC FETs become limited by relatively low
channel mobility, high field stresses in gate dielectrics, and
high substrate resistance. As these issues are addressed,
some SiC devices are becoming available for high power



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016

IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - Cover1
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - Cover2
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - 1
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IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - Cover3
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2016 - Cover4
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