EPC intros buck power conversion demo board featuring (eGaN) FETs

EL SEGUNDO, USA: Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) introduced the EPC9101, a fully functional buck power conversion demonstration circuit. This board is an 8 V-19 V input to 1.2 V, 18 A maximum output current, 1MHz buck converter. It uses the EPC2014 and EPC2015 eGaN FETs in conjunction with the recently introduced National LM5113 100V half-bridge gate driver from Texas Instruments.

The LM5113 is the industry’s first driver designed specifically for enhancement mode gallium nitride FETs. The EPC9101 demonstrates the reduced size and performance capabilities of high switching frequency eGaN FETs when coupled with this dedicated eGaN driver.

The power stage footprint of the EPC9101 circuit is only 8mm x 16mm (about 0.2 square inches) and about 8mm high when taking components from both sides into consideration. Despite its small size, the board has a peak power efficiency of 88 percent and is capable of delivering 18 amps of current at 1.2 volts.

To assist the design engineer, the EPC9101 is easy to set up to evaluate the performance of the EPC2014 and EPC2015 eGaN FETs and LM5113 gate driver. The board is intended for bench evaluation with low ambient temperature and convection cooling. Additional heat sinking and forced-air cooling can be used to evaluate beyond the rated current capability of the demonstration circuit.

A similar fully functional buck power conversion demonstration board, the LM5113LLPEVB, is available from Texas Instruments. This board features the LM5113 driver in operation with 100V EPC2001 eGaN FETs. The LM5113LLPEVB demo board is a 15 V – 60 V input to10 V, 10 A, 800kHZ, buck converter. Like the EPC9101, this board demonstrates the size and performance enhancement that can be achieved using the EPC2001 eGaN FETs and the LM5113 gate driver.