The 2018 GaN power electronics roadmap

Abstract

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound semiconductor that has tremendous potential to facilitate economic growth in a semiconductor industry that is silicon-based and currently faced with diminishing returns of performance versus cost of investment. At a material level, its high electric field strength and electron mobility have already shown tremendous potential for high frequency communications and photonic applications. Advances in growth on commercially viable large area substrates are now at the point where power conversion applications of GaN are at the cusp of commercialisation. The future for building on the work described here in ways driven by specific challenges emerging from entirely new markets and applications is very exciting. This collection of GaN technology developments is therefore not itself a road map but a valuable collection of global state-of-the-art GaN research that will inform the next phase of the technology as market driven requirements evolve. First generation production devices are igniting large new markets and applications that can only be achieved using the advantages of higher speed, low specific resistivity and low saturation switching transistors. Major investments are being made by industrial companies in a wide variety of markets exploring the use of the technology in new circuit topologies, packaging solutions and system architectures that are required to achieve and optimise the system advantages offered by GaN transistors. It is this momentum that will drive priorities for the next stages of device research gathered here.

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Affiliated Institutions

• CEA LETI FR
• Nihon Dempa Kogyo (Japan) JP
• University of Cambridge GB
• University of Padua IT
• Navitas Systems (United States) US
• Nagoya Institute of Technology JP
• Virginia Tech US
• University of Liverpool GB
• Hong Kong University of Science and Technology HK
• HRL Laboratories (United States) US
• Siemens (Austria) AT
• University of Bristol GB
• The University of Texas at Austin US
• Université Grenoble Alpes FR
• Qorvo (United States) US
• University of Glasgow GB
• Infineon Technologies (Austria) AT
• Zhejiang University CN
• CEA Grenoble FR
• University of Hong Kong HK
• Nagoya University JP
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology US
• Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Systems and Device Technology DE
• MicroLink Devices (United States) US
• IMEC BE
• National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology JP
• Cardiff University GB
• University of Sheffield GB
• Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives FR
• Schott (Germany) DE
• University of Notre Dame US

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