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Industry News
January 2, 2013
Advanced Materials to Lead Power Electronics Tech in 2013
2013 New Year's Power Celebration
Silicon-carbide (SiC) and gallium-nitride (GaN) will be challenged by new contenders in the coming year. That's not to say that SiC and GaN power devices will not gain increasing market adoption, they will. But other semiconductor materials such as aluminum-nitride (AlN), gallium-arsenide (GaAs), advanced thin-film magnetic materials, and more, will emerge as the "next big things" in 2013. The emergence of more new materials will be accompanied by the emergence of "new" companies such as Sarda Technologies, HexaTech, Inc ., Ferric Semiconductor, and others.
Sarda is focused on the development of advanced power switches for portable devices. Sarda will come out of stealth mode when they present a paper at the IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference in March. The paper will be titled, "The gFETT Switch: A New Low-Voltage High-Speed GaAs HEMT for Switching Applications," the authors are Robert White, Anthony Marini and Greg Miller.
Based in Durham, North Carolina, Sarda is focused on reducing power loss in <20V dc-dc voltage converters. Sarda's technology results from the use of GaAs to enable a radical reimaging of the basic field effect transistor geometry and enables the switches used in converters to achieve ultra-low power loss and very-high switching frequencies. The Sarda team is led by semiconductor industry veterans Bob Conner and Jim Vorhaus, both of whom have significant Fortune 500 company and startup experience.
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In February of last year, TriQuint Semiconductor announced that its Foundry Services division was supporting Sarda to bring a new line of high-efficiency converter switches to the global marketplace. This support will allow Sarda to utilize TriQuint's foundry line for the development and production of their product.
In March, Sarda received its first equity funding from IDEA Fund Partners, a venture capital firm providing seed and early stage financing to technology companies throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. Sarda had previously been awarded an NC IDEA grant in the Spring of 2011, receiving funds to assist in the patenting of its technology. During the grant process, Sarda created an advisory board that included NC IDEA Venture Advisor and IDEA Fund Partners Managing General Partner, John Cambier. Sarda is only the fifth NC IDEA grant recipient that has attracted investment from IDEA Fund Partners.
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While Sarda is focused on low-voltage power conversion for portable devices, HexaTech is targeting very-high-voltage power switches for emerging applications in the smart grid. Last month, HexaTech, received a $2.2 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) that will enable the development of a new power semiconductor technology for the modernization of the electrical power grid. HexaTech's aluminum-nitride (AlN) technology was identified by the Department of Energy as having the potential to be a transformational, breakthrough technology with significant technical promise, potentially 10X better performance than comparable silicon-carbide devices.
Using very low-dislocation-density single-crystal AlN substrates, HexaTech will develop novel doping schemes and contact metals for AlN/AlGaN with high Al content. For power systems and grid-scale power conversion applications, high-efficiency AlN-based power devices are expected to offer a significant reduction in size, weight, and cooling.
Dr. Baxter Moody, Director of Engineering, said, "This contract marks the beginning of a technological leap in device performance and efficiency for power semiconductors. The development will enable a significant step toward producing 20 kV AlN-based Schottky diodes (SBD, JBSD) and transistors (JFET, MOSFET). The ARPA-E contract has opened the door for the material development and research to demonstrate AlN high-voltage, high-efficiency power conversion capability."
Power semiconductor devices at this level are not currently available on the market. Experimental devices based on silicon carbide (SiC) technology are currently being developed. Compared to SiC technology, it is expected that Aluminum Nitride will enable power electronics with a 10X improvement in performance. Based on the wide bandgap material properties of AlN, the critical field is 6X larger, the on resistance will be lower, and the resulting power device area will be smaller for a comparable power level. This is expected to be a transformational technology that will revolutionize the power distribution grid.
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Enpirion Inc.
Ferric Semiconductor
HexaTech, Inc.
Renesas Technology America Corp.
Sarda Technologies, Inc.
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