The Plenary session at Darnell’s Power Forum in Chicago yesterday identified major disruptions for the power conversion industry ranging from new materials to new and increasingly-complex power system architectures. Presenters included Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Corporation, Henrik Zessin, Manager from Fraunhofer Institute, Chris Young, Senior Manager from Intersil Zilker Labs and Randy Malik, Senior Member Technical Staff with IBM.
Pointing toward lower-cost and higher-performance switching transistors, Alex Lidow predicted that EPC’s enhancement-mode eGaN transistors will cost less than comparable silicon power MOSFETs by 2015. He discussed the effort to develop dedicated wafer processing equipment specifically for GaN transistors that will lead to lower device costs.