Single-Stage Bidirectional Switch Converters Target EV Chargers, Solar Inverters, and More

April 15, 2025

Navitas’s bidirectional drivers enable advanced “single-stage” topologies to further enhance efficiency, power density, and performance in AC-DC and AC-AC conversion.

Lee Goldberg

Related To:

Electronic Design

At APEC 2025, Navitas Semiconductor introduced a single-stage bidirectional switch-converter architecture based on the first commercially available 650-V bidirectional GaNFast ICs and high-speed isolated gate drivers.

Until now, virtually all high-voltage power-converter architectures required two or more stages. Navitas offers a simpler solution that achieves up to 10% cost savings, 20% energy savings, and up to a 50% reduction in solution size. Targeted applications include EV charging (onboard and roadside), solar inverters, energy storage, and motor drives.

The solution consists of a family of 650-V bidirectional GaNFast ICs and high-speed isolated gate drivers. The GaNFast power devices are based on a merged drain structure, which integrates two gate controls and a patented, integrated, active substrate clamp. The companion IsoFast high-speed drivers are galvanically isolated, optimized to drive bidirectional GaN power devices with 4X higher transient immunity than existing drivers (up to 200 V/ns). No external negative bias supply is required.

Navitas single-stage, bidirectional power converter architecture — Navitas’s single-stage, bidirectional power converter architecture achieves up to 10% cost savings, 20% energy savings, and up to a 50% reduction in solution size over conventional two-stage designs.

The first members of the product family are the NV6427 and NV6428 bidirectional GaNFast ICs, and their companion drivers, the IsoFast NV1702 (dual, independent-channel, digital, isolated bidirectional GaN gate driver) and NV1701 (half-bridge GaN digital isolator). All devices are fully qualified and immediately available in mass-production quantities with samples available now to qualified customers. Evaluation boards and a user guide are also available.

Check out the video for more information:

About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.