Power Integrations has demonstrated what it claims is the industry's first 2,200V GaN switch.
The new technology will expand the company’s PowiGaN platform for power conversion up to bus voltages that the data centre and automotive industries are planning to adopt in the mid-term future. The announcement was a technology reveal rather than a product launch, with the first products expected to be announced as early as next year.
PowiGaN has steadily climbed in voltage capabilities since its introduction. The 1,700V device that was introduced in 2024 was intended for 800V data centre supplies, as well as EV 800V battery architectures. The migration towards ±400V/800V DC distribution cuts copper losses as GPU power draw escalates. Both industries are looking at 1,500V as the next node, and Nvidia has already published papers making that case. There are also applications available today: 1,200 V automotive systems, photovoltaic installations at 1,500V, and auxiliary supplies for emerging high-voltage DC transmission that need devices with a higher blocking voltage than current PowiGaN devices provide.
The new technology will be fabricated on the company's proprietary GaN-on-sapphire process and with its depletion-mode (d-mode) GaN HEMT architecture. Because the HEMT is normally on, it is paired in cascode with a low-voltage silicon MOSFET that performs the actual switching while the GaN handles the full blocking voltage. In practice, this means that the device is simple to drive, while the alternative enhancement-mode GaN devices are notoriously difficult to drive and vulnerable to overvoltages. The cascode design can be driven like any silicon MOSFET at 12V, 10V or even 5V. Third-quadrant operation is also more efficient than e-mode alternatives, which is important for bridge topologies.
The measured off-state breakdown voltage is 4,000V, but while 2kV overhead may appear to be overdesign, it ensures reliability. Semiconductor failure-in-time (FIT) calculations use temperature and voltage as the two acceleration factors, so the gap between the published 2,200V rating and the point where leakage begins to climb is deliberate headroom created to ensure very low FIT rates. Power Integrations already holds automotive qualification for its GaN devices and points to its HTRB FIT performance that it claims is unmatched. The extra margin also provides safety for one-time events and dynamic RDS(on) stability, as well leaving headroom for degradation after the device has been operated above 2,200 V continuously.
To prove the 2,200V concept,the company conducted a practical test. It constructed a flyback supply of roughly 40W, peak current 1.5A, using a GaN switch mated to a suitable low-voltage silicon MOSFET in an InnoSwitch package. Input voltage was raised to 1,500V, which is 80% of peak rating. The converter ran continuously for more than 20 hours, with normalised RDS(on) monitored across the cascode found to be flat, indicating no dynamic RDS(on) effects under real power-supply stresses.
Silicon carbide is an alternative technology that can be used at high voltages, but its switching frequency is too low to offer the highest efficiency. SiC exists at 1,200V and 1,700V, but practical switching tops out around 200 to 400kHz, whereas GaN can run beyond 1MHz, shrinking magnetics dramatically. With ZVS topologies such as LLC, switching loss largely disappears and conduction losses dominate. In the designs Power Integrations’ customers are building, the thermal bottlenecks are the magnetics, the SR MOSFETs handling thousands of amps, and the PCB, not the primary-side switch.
The higher voltage technology brings another less obvious benefit - a higher primary-side rating allows a larger reflected voltage in a flyback, which reduces stress on the secondary-side synchronous rectifier. Low-RDS(on) SR MOSFETs above 150V are scarce, so being able to stay with a 100V part while handling very high input voltages is a real benefit to designers.
