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I've been working with GaN parts for RF after being out of the hardware game for a few years. GaN was around but nowhere near as prolific as it is now. I though
by csirac2 11y ago
I've been working with GaN parts for RF after being out of the hardware game for a few years. GaN was around but nowhere near as prolific as it is now. I thought SiC would have made more inroads than it has. GaN parts just seem incredible in every way (to someone like me at least) - amazing performance, efficiency, power handling in such a small package, more impressive impedance matching on wideband parts - it's just a shame the basic problem of harmonics still hasn't been whisked away by magic :)
- jpmattia 11y agoIt's been eons since I touched this stuff, but the article said that they're on GaAs on Si wafers for a substrate. Is that the usual these days? ISTR that SiC was always a PITA to grow on decent/cheap substrates, which may have held it back. That and it didn't have the whole blue LED industry driving it.
- madengr 11y agoStill issues getting the heat out, but yes, GaN is pretty amazing. 10 years ago I was load pulling and matching sub 1 Ohm (24 mm) HFET die for 12 watts. Now you can get 120W in the same periphery.
- dskhatri 11y agoPackaging is indeed critical to get heat out. There have been some cool (no pun intended) developments on this front such as the DirectFET [1], LFPAK [2] [1] http://www.irf.com/technical-info/whitepaper/directfet.pdf http://www.irf.com/technical-info/whitepaper/directfet.pdf [2] http://www.nxp.com/documents/leaflet/939775016838_LR.pdf http://www.nxp.com/documents/leaflet/939775016838_LR.pdf [3]
- madengr 11y agoInteresting. I have never seen RF power parts in flip-chip, but I suppose there is no reason why they couldn't. Now Cree did have a 25W, 3 GHz FET in SO-8 package, which is kind of strange given package inductance, but they are have moved to QFN now.