Stmicro has introduced new 45W and 150W MasterGaN products for energy-efficient power conversion applications

     To facilitate the transition to energy-efficient wide-bandgap semiconductor technology, stmicroelectronics has released MasterGaN3* and MasterGaN5 integrated power system packages for power conversion applications up to 45W and 150W, respectively.

     Together with MasterGaN1, MasterGaN2 and MasterGaN4 for 65W to 400W applications, These two new products provide engineers designing switching power supplies, chargers, adapters, high-voltage power factor correction (PFC) and DC/DC converters with increased flexibility in selecting the right gallium nitride (GaN) devices and drive solutions.

     Stmicro's MasterGaN concept simplifies the development process of GaN wide band-gap power technology to replace ordinary silicon based MOSFETs. The new product integrates two 650V power transistors with optimized high voltage gate drivers and associated safety protection circuits, eliminating gate driver and circuit layout design challenges. Because GaN transistors can achieve higher switching frequencies, the new integrated power system package enables power supply sizes that are 80% smaller than silicon-based designs with high robustness and reliability.

     The two GaN power transistors of MasterGaN3 have unequal conduction resistance (Rds(on)), which are 225mΩ and 450mΩ, respectively, making it suitable for soft switching and active rectifier converters. In MasterGaN5, both transistors have 450mΩ conduction resistance (Rds(on)), which is suitable for topology such as LLC resonance and active clamp flyback converter.

     Like other members of the MasterGaN family of products, both devices have inputs compatible with 3.3V to 15V logic signals, thus simplifying the connection between the product itself and the main controller such as a DSP processor, FPGA or microcontroller and external devices such as Hall sensors. The new product also incorporates safety protection features including high and low side undervoltage locking (UVLO), gate driver interlocking, overheat protection, and shut-off pins.

     Each MasterGaN product comes with a dedicated prototype development board to help designers quickly start new power projects. Both EVALMASTERGAN3 and EVALMASTERGAN5 development boards contain a single-ended or complementary driver signal generator circuit. An adjustable dead-time generator is onboard, along with the associated device interface to facilitate the user to adopt different input signals or PWM signals, an external bootstrap diode is connected to improve capacitive load, and a low side-check current resistor is inserted for the peaking and flow topology.

     MasterGaN3 and MasterGaN5 are now in mass production in a 9mm x 9mm GQFN package optimized for high voltage applications with a creepage distance of 2mm between high and low pressure pads.