IRF building Gallium Nitride FETs

[drdagor]

The URL goes to an interesting article about Gallium Nitride FETs coming from International Rectifier...

http://www.edn.com/blog/1700000170/p...rid=1777939770

The article speculates that IRF is hard at work on a set of enhancement mode, high power fets using their recently patented GaN technology.

Sounds like just the thing for a power house version of the Pass F5 or something run off the National LM4702 driver chip.

Anybody heard anything more specific than this piece from an industry rag?

[ostripper]

Looks like NEC (japan)and others already sell them for RF usage
(transmitters and cellphones).

http://www.rfmd.com/adocs/bf/GaN_bro.pdf

These devices seem to be very fast (low capacitance)
with extremely long lifetimes.

Here is a paper on GA/N devices:
http://www.oki.com/en/otr/211/downloads/otr-211-R23.pdf

Hopefully these new devices will bring about the same revolution
that GA/N has brought to the LED lighting industry.

OS

[wg_ski]

Most GaN in my experience is depletion mode. If they managed to get Vpo less negative, it may be sort of somewhere in between (some current at Vgs=0). Also, don't hold out much hope for P-channel devices. If they did make them, it would end up defeating the purpose - which is operation well into the GHz range.

Voltage can be staggeringly high for a given fT. Not so sure about DC SOA - if it's as good as good-ol' Si Mosfet. That's not the usual purpose for those devices.