Providing an easy-to-use way for power systems designers to evaluate the exceptional performance of gallium nitride transistors and get their products into volume production quickly, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the expansion of its portfolio of DrGaNPLUS evaluation boards. These boards are proof-of-concept designs that integrate all necessary components of a half-bridge circuit into a single, extremely small PCB-based module that can be readily mounted to demonstrate the excellent performance of a GaN transistor power conversion solution.
As an example of performance, the EPC9203, an 80 V, 20 A half-bridge power converter is a "plug and play" evaluation board that designers can use to quickly and easily evaluate the high performance gained with gallium nitride power transistors. This board, with Vin = 48 V and Vout = 12 V, achieves greater than 97.5% peak total system efficiency, including power stage, inductor, driver, capacitors, and PCB losses.
Both boards operate in the same way and can be driven by either a single or a dual PWM input and feature eGaN FETs, the Texas Instrument's LM5113 driver, and high frequency input capacitors. The DrGaNPLUS board is small, only 11 mm x 12mm, and can mount directly onto a printed circuit board. It has been designed with an optimal layout to minimize the debilitating effects of common source and high frequency power commutation loop inductances.
