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The Growth of Wide Bandgap Technology in Industrial Power Conversion

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Demand for robust and reliable systems with improved performance, reduced size and increased efficiencies means that power supply designers are seeking new technologies to support increased switching speeds, higher power densities, extended voltage and power ranges, and operation over wider temperature ranges. Wide bandgap (WBG) silicon carbide (SiC) and gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors are an attractive choice for addressing these requirements. Broad adoption of WBG technology has been limited by the availability of higher voltage devices, stable and reliable solutions coming from multiple sources, and general availability given competing demands in emerging markets (e.g., EV).

Having championed their use in RF and dc plasma generators for semiconductor wafer fabrication and select electrosurgical applications for many years, we are now seeing new opportunities for widespread adoption of WBG technology for broader industrial power applications, including expanded uses in merchant power supplies for datacenter computing, telecom and lighting applications.

In this article we look at the increasing adoption of WBG technologies in power supply designs, the markets/applications in the frequency and power/voltage domain that have already benefited from SiC and GaN, and the circuit topologies where they are being deployed.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10839211

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