eGaN FET-Silicon Shoot-Out Vol. 9: Wireless Power Converters

Focus:

Wireless power transmission in the 6.78 MHz in the ISM band (the Alliance for Wireless Power standard) presents opportunities for the new GaN power transistors, which offer faster switching than the conventional, silicon power MOSFETs. This article compares the performance of EPC’s eGaN FETs (the 40-V EPC2014) with that of silicon power MOSFETs (Infineon’s 30-V BSZ130N03LS_G) in a half-bridge power amplifier stage of a 6.78-MHz, 15-W wireless power system. Following a brief explanation of induction-based systems, most of the article describes the design of the system, explaining the various architectural, circuit, and component choices in some detail. Not quite a full application note, but good explanations of the various design tradeoffs. In the last sections, experimental results are presented including an analysis of losses and efficiency. The eGaN FET-based system achieves up to 4% better efficiency than the MOSFET-based system and opportunities for improving efficiency further through development of a 30-V eGAN FET are discussed.

What you’ll learn:

• How to design a high-efficiency 6.78-MHz wireless power system using eGaN FETs
• How to understand the design tradeoffs when developing a 6.78-MHz wireless power system
• How to improve the efficiency of ISM band wireless power systems

Notes:

This article appeared in the July 2012 print edition of Power Electronics Technology. 2. The same experiment is described in an 8-minute, slide-show style video “eGaN FETs for Wireless Power Applications,” narrated by Michael De Rooij. This presentation focuses mainly on the results of the experiment, but includes some background on wireless power and an abbreviated discussion of the design of the wireless power system. This video quickly gets to the point about performance of eGaN FETs versus silicon MOSFETs in a 6.78 MHz wireless power system. Some readers may wish to view this video first before opting to read the article in PET. The video is available at http://epc-co.com/epc/DesignSupportbr/TrainingVideos.aspx. There’s also a shorter (3-minute), more video-like version of this presentation titled “EPC eGaN FET Application: Wireless Power Transfer” on YouTube, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWpGBbD83Vo.

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Author & Publication:

Michael de Rooij, Ph.D., Senior Director, Applications, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation; Johan Strydom, Ph.D., Vice President, Applications, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, Power Electronics Technology, Jun 27 2012

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