Board reduces development time in evaluating eGaN

The half-bridge development board can operate up to 10MHz. It has a 30V, 15A EPC2111 eGaN half bridge and Peregrine Semiconductors recently introduced, high speed PE29102 gate driver.

The board can reduce time to market by simplifying the evaluation process of the eGaN by including all the critical components, such as the gate driver on a single board that can be easily connected into any existing converter, says the company.

The PE29102 is an integrated high-speed driver specifically designed to control the gates of high switching-speed external power devices, such as eGaN FETs. Its outputs can provide switching transition speeds in the sub-nanosecond range with optimised matched dead time. It is claimed to offer best-in-class propagation delay for hard switching applications up to 40MHz, enabling the high performance of GaN power transistors. The PE29102 provides minimum pulse widths of five nanoseconds and is offered as a x2 1.6 mm flip chip die, to achieve a small form factor power stage for high duty cycle power conversion at high frequency.

The board can be used for applications where high frequency can enable a significant size and height reduction such as notebook and tablet computing, says EPC. It has been evaluated in a 12V to point-of-load DC/DC converter application and achieved efficiency levels of 86% at 10A when switching at 5.0MHz, and over 80% when switching at 10MHz.

The high efficiency, half-bridge development boards are available for immediate delivery from distributor, Digi-Key.