Chicony Power and TI Join Forces to Bring GaN Technology to Next-Generation Energy-Efficient Laptop Power Adapter

­Texas Instruments (TI) announced that Chicony Power designed in TI’s integrated gallium nitride (GaN) technology to power its latest 65-W laptop power adapter, Le Petit. Leveraging TI’s half-bridge GaN FET with integrated gate driver, LMG2610, Chicony Power and TI collaborated on a design to reduce the size of Chicony’s power adapter by 50% and increase efficiency up to 94%.

As a leading power supply provider committed to improving power conversion efficiency in electronic power designs, Chicony Power has worked closely with international IC companies, providing them with market and technical requirements to help develop solutions in new designs. For the Le Petit laptop adapter design, Chicony Power teamed up with TI for its expertise in high-voltage design and its integrated GaN technology. TI’s LMG2610 is designed to be paired with the UCC28782 active clamp flyback (ACF) controller to create an easy-to-use, high-efficiency, and high-power-density solution for AC/DC designs under 75 W.

Improving power conversion efficiency

Increasingly, consumers seek smaller, lighter electronics while also wanting to reduce their energy footprint. In the laptop power adapter market, this has challenged engineers to find new ways to pack more power in smaller spaces while minimizing power loss to deliver more efficient adapters.

Chicony Power and TI were able to miniaturize the power adapter design and lower the use of mechanical materials by 40% by leveraging TI’s LMG2610 GaN FET, which integrates upper and lower switches, gate driver IC, level shifter and bootstrap circuits on a single chip, as well as Chicony Power’s 3D structure, component miniaturization, heat dissipation system and electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppression design expertise. Le Petit has a compact size of 49 cm3, slightly larger than a typical ice cube, with a power supply conversion efficiency as high as 94% compared to the 89% efficiency achieved by typical power adapters using silicon materials.

“Our collaboration with Chicony Power is an example of how TI’s products help make electronics smaller, more energy-efficient and more reliable,” said Luke Lee, TI’s vice president for Asia and president for Taiwan, Korea and South Asia. “Our highly integrated GaN technology enables power adapters with improved thermal performance and power efficiency while delivering high power density with fewer components.”

“Chicony has been committed to corporate social responsibility and has been implementing the code of conduct of Responsible Business Alliance (RBA) for many years,” said Winson Huang, chief procurement officer, Chicony Power.“The collaboration with TI to develop a new generation of power adapters will not only provide consumers with lighter and more convenient devices, compared to other 65-W adapters in the market, but also use the advantages of both parties to jointly create more energy-efficient products.”

Addressing thermal and EMI challenges

In addition to power efficiency and size advantages delivered by TI’s integrated GaN technology, the UCC28780 and UCC28782 flyback controllers support high-frequency zero-voltage switching (ZVS) design. Combining these advantages with Chicony Power’s power design expertise, Chicony Power’s designers were able to overcome the temperature increases and rise in EMI typically caused by higher frequency energy in lightweight power supplies, and effectively reduced the size of the power adapter while maintaining temperature and performance control.

For more information on TI’s GaN technology, go here.