Ground-breaking 1250V GaN switcher IC now available

Power Integrations has released the world's highest-voltage, single-switch GaN power supply IC, featuring a 1250V PowiGaN switch. InnoSwitch3-EP 1250V ICs are the latest members of the company's InnoSwitch family of off-line CV/CC QR flyback switcher ICs, which provide synchronous rectification, FluxLink safety-isolated feedback and an array of switch options: 725V silicon, 1700V silicon carbide, and PowiGaN in 750V, 900V and now 1250V varieties.

The switching losses for the company's proprietary 1250V PowiGaN technology are less than a third of that witnessed in equivalent silicon devices at the same voltage. This results in power conversion efficiency as high as 93% – allowing highly compact flyback power supplies that can deliver up to 85W without a heatsink.

Radu Barsan, vice president of technology at Power Integrations, said: "Power Integrations continues to advance the state of the art in high-voltage GaN technology development and commercial deployment, rendering even the best high-voltage silicon MOSFETs obsolete along the way. We were first to market with high-volume shipments of GaN-based power-supply ICs in 2019, and earlier this year introduced a 900V version of our GaN-based InnoSwitch products. Our ongoing development of higher voltage GaN technology, illustrated here by our new 1250V devices, extend the efficiency benefits of GaN to an even wider range of applications, including many currently served by silicon-carbide technology."

Developers using the new ICs can confidently select an operating peak voltage of 1000V, providing industry-standard 80% de-rating from the 1250V absolute maximum. This offers significant headroom for industrial applications and is specifically valuable in challenging power grid environments where robustness is a critical defence against grid instability, surge and other power perturbations.