Little Chips That Power Large Applications

­Welcome to the November edition of PSD. In this issue we will look at power semiconductors – the tiny devices that are the foundation of the industry. The industry is always innovating to create new materials, better control methods and smaller solutions that provide greater and greater efficiency. This month’s magazine will look at just some of those innovations.

The first article in the Special Report comes from onsemi, and it looks at solid-state circuit breakers. Traditionally, circuit breakers are electromechanical components. These devices have been a mainstay of the electronics industry for decades, and they perform very well. However, modern times demand modern solutions. Solid-state circuit breakers offer many advantages over electromechanical ones, including speed, size, robustness and better protection. The only drawback to adopting solid-state solutions is that the devices are always conducting when in operation, and that means that RDSon losses mount over time, particularly for higher power applications. SiC JFETs have been adopted to minimize these losses through their low RDSon. The one problem with this is that JFETs’ have a normally-on characteristic, when the applications for which they are intended usually prefer normally-off for safety reasons. The feature describes how onsemi solved this issue and what other steps the company has taken to make solid-state circuit breakers a viable proposition.   

Following that, the next piece in the Special Report was contributed by Infineon. It looks the company’s approach to driving the latest silicon, SiC and GaN transistors to create a power supply that has the performance and density to power AI chips. The demands from the AI sector are growing, and not only do the operators want to power AI chips as efficiently as possible to minimize losses and stop the heat caused by those losses, but they also want solutions to be in as small a form factor as possible. Controlling the switches in the power supply using cutting edge drivers goes a long way to help achieve those goals. The article looks at the traits of the company’s latest drivers and describes the difference that they make in AI applications.    

The final Special Report article this month tells us how Navitas has combined trench and planar SiC MOSFETs to negate the drawbacks of either type and offer the benefits of both. Traditionally manufacturers have had to choose one of the two architectures and work to overcome their drawbacks. Planar designs are easy to make, cheap and robust, while trench solutions are more efficient, with higher power density. Now, those trade-offs are unnecessary with the company’s new trench-assisted planar architecture, which provides the significantly improved on-resistance of trench MOSFETs and the affordability and reliability of planar ones.

As well as the Special Report, this month’s issue will also contain articles of interest to the power industry in our Tech Focus section, as well as the latest news and views from the industry.

Best Regards,

Ally Winning

European Editor, PSD