Application Status of the Third Generation Semiconductor Material GaN Chips

Near the end of the year, the fast charge market is extremely hot. In October 2020, Apple announced that iPhone12 series phones and all iPhone models sold on its official website would no longer come with chargers, which excited the whole fast charging market.

Xiaomi 10, Huawei Mate 40, OPPO and Samsung's latest Android phones have all launched gallium nitride chargers, from 45W, 65W to 120W fast-charging products on the market.

GaN charger is adopted by Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO and other top five mobile phone manufacturers in the world, which drives the whole fast charging industry to show a growth trend.

According to Yole, a market-research firm, the biggest segment of the power GaN market is still power applications or quick charging of mobile phones. The market size will grow at a compound annual rate of 92% between 2018 and 2024. Among them, the GaN fast charging market between 2020 and 2023 growth rate will reach 55%. In an optimistic scenario, the gallium nitride power market could exceed $750 million.

Why is gallium nitride the best choice for fast charging materials?

As one of the core materials of the third-generation semiconductor, GaN has three main characteristics: high switching frequency, large bandgap width and lower on-off resistance.

Its advantages in the charger are mainly reflected in small size, lightweight;

High power density, high efficiency but not easy to heat;

Mobile phones, notebooks can be charged, compatible with multiple devices.

Lei Jun, chairman and CEO of Xiaomi Corp, once introduced at the launch of Xiaomi 10 that GaN is a new semiconductor material, which makes a charger with a particularly small size, high charging efficiency and low heat, and is compatible with both mobile phones and laptops.

The Mi Type-C GaN 65W charger is half the size of the standard 65W charger, and it only takes 45 minutes to fully charge the Mi 10 Pro equipped with a 4500 mAh battery. The GaN charger also charges the iPhone 11 twice as fast as the original.

With large-screen phones becoming the mainstream and processors constantly upgraded, battery technology has reached a bottleneck, and how to charge faster has become the key to solving the battery life problem.

According to Li, gallium nitride (GaN) is getting attention for two reasons: the screen size continues to rise, and the battery capacity continues to rise. Ten years ago, the average cell phone battery capacity was 1,200 mAh. By 2020, the average smartphone battery capacity will reach 4,500 mph. Within 10 years, the battery capacity will be nearly tripled. The phone's screen has grown from 2 inches to 6.5 inches today, and the screen is four times larger. In the future, the bigger the smartphone screen, the more power the entire CPU, RF and peripheral electronics will use, and the larger the battery will be.

Gallium nitride is the fastest power switching device in the world, and it can maintain high efficiency under the premise of high-speed switching. The high switching frequency reduces the size of the transformer, thus greatly reducing the size of the charger. At the same time, gallium nitride has a lower loss, the use of gallium nitride chips, reducing the use of other components, further reducing the size of the charger.

 

Nano Semiconductor: more than 5 million gallium nitride power IC products were shipped to accelerate the launch of mainstream products.

Founded in 2014, NANometer Semiconductor focused on GaN power chips and quickly established its reputation in the market with its highly integrated GaN power chips for the consumer market.

Recently, in the USB PD&Type-C Asia Conference 2020, Sales director Li Wenhui shared their latest progress: In June 2020, the world's smallest 50W flash charger OPPO biscuit charger came out, which is equipped with Nanochip; In July, the 5 million microchips was successfully put on the market. In August, the world's first dedicated gallium nitride overspeed charger for the iPhone 12 came out ahead of schedule, with a nanopower IC chip.

Li analysis said that initially gallium nitride technology in dMode FET, characteristics under no voltage control, requires additional silicon FET "cascade" configuration, the need to set up complex circuits. Nano Semiconductor sticks to the eMode FET technology, which turns off when there is no voltage. Similar to traditional MOSFET, it is easier to control.

Using its proprietary AllGaN process design suite, NANO Semiconductor integrates the highest performance GaNFast with a single chip of logic and analog circuits to provide smaller, more efficient and less costly power for the mobile, consumer and new energy markets.

It is reported that the release of the gallium nitride fast-charging products using nano semiconductor power chip products.

Navitas has a strong team of experts in the power semiconductor industry and owns more than 120 patents. Its power IC is the OEM of TSMC. From January 2018 to July 2020, Navitas has shipped 5 million power IC and is expected to deliver more than 9 million chips to customers worldwide by the end of this year, achieving zero faults.

Mr. Li emphasized that the Semiconductor power IC chip has been subjected to proprietary reliability tests and has a 50-year lifespan.

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