Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) has developed an 800V horizontal power semiconductors using a gallium nitride (GaN) single crystal substrate, the South Korean national institute said.
It will be used as a core component for electric vehicles (EV) to minimize power loss, ETRI said.
Previously, power semiconductors were used for low power of between 200V to 300V due to use of mixed substrates.
ETRI’s vertical power chip has higher breakdown power characteristics compared to horizontal power chips, it said.
The chip stacks epitaxial layers vertically to increase the voltage while controlling resistance.
The epitaxy is grown on the single crystal substrate __ then design, process and packaging is applied.
Previously, substrates with epitaxy were imported over 90% of the time but ETRI’s new technology will allow companies to localize their supply, it said.
GaN is heat resistant and has switching speeds of tens of MHz which allows it to not require additional space to store power. This allows GaN systems to be third in size to those made from silicon (Si).
Band gap is also three times to those of Si __ at around 3.4eV.
ETRI said the chip can also be used for solar panel inverters and power distribution networks.
