Cranking Up the power with gallium nitride

Navitas Semiconductor has released the NV6128, a new high-power 650V/800V-rated GaNFast power IC to meet the needs of the high-power mobile and consumer power electronics market, and take market share from the old, slow, silicon chip. The 70mOhm device shows a 66% increase in current capability, in a small, 6mm x 8mm PQFN package with a proprietary, integrated cooling pad for high-efficiency, high-density power systems.

“GaNFast power ICs have been broadly adopted by tier-1 names like Lenovo, Dell, OPPO and Xiaomi for fast-charging mobile adapters up to 200W, with over 13,000,000 shipped and zero failures,” noted Gene Sheridan, Navitas CEO and co-founder. “With the higher-power NV6128, we extended the effective power range to 500W for the consumer market and look beyond that to multi-kW data centre, eMobility and new energy applications.”

Unlike competing solutions, the device is rated at 650V for nominal operation plus a high, 800V peak capability for robust operation during transient events. As a true power IC, the GaN gate is protected and the whole device rated at an industry-leading ESD specification of 2kV.

“It’s a night and day comparison,” said Dan Kinzer, Navitas CTO/COO and co-founder. “Compared to current tier-1 OEM laptop adapters using old silicon in traditional diode rectification and boost PFC topologies at 50-70kHz, the GaNFast NV6128 enables a modern high-speed totem-pole architecture and complete 300W solutions at over 1.1W/cc. That’s up to 3x smaller and lighter with existing 200kHz control. When you crank up the speed to MHz+, you get another major step-increase in power density.”

For power electronics designers, the device and all the GaNFast power IC family provide easy-to-use, high-speed, high-efficiency solutions for 200-500W applications including all-in-one PCs, TVs, game consoles, eMobility chargers (eScooters, eBikes), gaming laptops and more.