Transphorm gallium nitride devices are the first to achieve a short-circuit robustness milestone critical for motor drive applications

     Transphorm, a leading global supplier of gallium nitride (GaN) power semiconductor products, has announced that it has achieved a short circuit tolerance time (SCWT) of up to 5 microseconds on gallium nitride power transistors using one of the company's patented technologies. This is the first achievement of its kind ever recorded and a major milestone for the industry, Transphorm's gallium nitride devices are proven to meet the short-circuit resistance required for rugged power inverters traditionally supported by silicon IGBTs or silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFEts, such as servo motors, industrial motors and automotive powertrains The potential market size (TAM) for gallium nitride in these applications exceeds $3 billion over the next five years.

     The project was developed with the support of Yaskawa Electric Corporation, a long-term strategic partner of Transphorm and one of the world leaders in low - and medium-voltage drives, servos, machine controllers and industrial robots. Compared to existing solutions, gallium nitride can achieve higher efficiency and smaller size, which also makes gallium nitride an attractive power conversion technology for servo system applications, for which Gallium nitride must pass the rigorous robustness tests required in the field, the most challenging of which is the need to withstand short circuit shocks, when a short circuit failure occurs. The device must operate properly under extreme conditions of high current and high voltage. The system detects a fault and stops operating, sometimes for a few microseconds, during which time the device must be able to withstand the shock of the failure.

     Motoshige Maeda, manager of Basic Research and Development Management at Yaskawa Electric's Technology Department, said: "If a power semiconductor device cannot withstand a short circuit, then the system itself is likely to fail. There was a deep-seated belief in the industry that gallium nitride power transistors could not meet short-circuit tolerance requirements in heavy-duty power applications such as those described above. Yaskawa Electric has worked with Transphorm for many years, and we believe this perception is unfounded. And today proves that we were right. We are excited about what the Transphorm team has achieved and look forward to demonstrating how our product designs benefit from this new gallium nitride device feature."

     The short-circuit technology has been validated on a newly designed 15mΩ 650V gallium nitride device from Transphorm. It is worth noting that under the hard switching condition of 50 kHz, the peak efficiency of the device reaches 99.2% and the maximum power is 12kW, which not only shows the excellent performance and high reliability of the device, but also meets the requirements of high temperature and high voltage stress specifications.

     Transphorm co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Umesh Mishra said: "Standard gallium nitride devices can only withstand short circuits with durations of a few hundredths of a nanosecond, which is too short for fault detection and safe shutdown operations. However, thanks to our cascode architecture and key patented technologies, Transphorm has been able to extend short circuit endurance to 5 microseconds without adding external components, maintaining the device's low cost and high performance characteristics. Transphorm understands the needs of high-power, high-performance inverter systems, and Transphorm has a long history of innovation, which we are proud to say has helped us take gallium nitride technology to the next level. "This reaffirms Transphorm's global leadership in the robustness and reliability of high-voltage gallium nitride and plays a key role in changing the dynamic for motor drives and other high-power system applications."