In its seventh year, Design World’s LEAP Awards showcase the best engineering innovations across several design categories. This wouldn’t be possible without the commitment and support of the engineering community. The editorial team assembles OEM design engineers and academics each year to create an independent judging panel. Below is their selection for this year’s LEAP Awards winners in the Power Electronics category.

Congratulations to the LEAP Awards for Power Electronics winners, who are profiled here.

Gold

Power Integrations
InnoSwitch™3-EP PSU IC with 1250 V GaN switch

This product has the highest voltage specification (1250 V) of any gallium-nitride (GaN) switch available on the market. This makes the InnoSwitch™3-EP 1250 V the world’s highest-voltage, single-switch, gallium-nitride (GaN) power supply IC. This introduction extends the high efficiency/high power density benefits of GaN to an even wider range of applications, including many currently served by the most costly silicon-carbide technology. Currently, most companies can only offer GaN devices up to 750 V. 

InnoSwitch™3-EP 1250 V ICs are the newest members of Power Integrations’ InnoSwitch family of off-line CV/CC QR flyback switcher ICs. The devices feature a 1250-volt PowiGaN™ GaN switch, positioning them as the world’s highest-voltage, single-switch gallium-nitride (GaN) power supply ICs. Other competitors have only released 750 V-rated parts. 

The switching losses for Power Integrations’ proprietary 1250 V PowiGaN technology are less than a third of those seen in equivalent silicon devices at the same voltage. This results in power conversion efficiency as high as 93%, enabling highly compact flyback power supplies that can deliver up to 85 W without a heatsink. 

InnoSwitch™3-EP 1250 V ICs also feature synchronous rectification and FluxLink™ safety-isolated feedback circuitry. 

The 1250 V rating of the InnoSwitch3-EP 1250 V ICs means that devices can be used in applications with an operating peak voltage of 1000 V  since 1250 V provides enough headroom to allow for industry-standard 80% de-rating. This is particularly valuable in challenging power grid environments where robustness is an essential defense against grid instability, surge, and other power perturbations.

Silver

Empower Semiconductor
EC1005P

The new EC1005P is a 16.6-microfarad (μF) silicon capacitor device suitable for the most demanding power integrity targets, such as those often found in power-intensive high-performance systems-on-chips (SoCs). It features ultra-low impedance up to 1GHz, which is ideal for enhancing the power delivery network (PDN). With its low profile, the EC1005P easily embeds into the substrate or interposer of any SoC, making it optimal for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

As the performance and power of SoCs constantly escalate, it is increasingly difficult to reach the power integrity level and voltage regulation these devices require with conventional multi-layer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs). The EC1005P features close-to-ideal parasitic parameters, allowing these SoCs to operate with reduced voltage margining and reduced system power.

The EC1005P leverages Empower’s high-performance and high-density silicon capacitor technology to fulfill the ‘last inch’ decoupling gap from the voltage regulators to the SoC supply pins. This approach substitutes several discrete components with much lower performance and a larger footprint with a single monolithic device that provides optimal electrical performance and simplifies the engineering design of the PDN and printed circuit board.

The EC1005P has an ultra-low sub-1-picohenry (pH) equivalent series inductance (ESL) and sub-3-milliohm (mΩ) equivalent series resistance (ESR) and is offered in a compact 3.643 x 3.036-millimeter package. The device has a 784-micron profile that can be customized for various height requirements. Empower’s silicon capacitors provide high stability over voltage and temperature and are not subject to derating or aging like traditional MLCCs.

Bronze

Eggtronic Engineering Spa
SmartEgg® — Single-Stage Zero Voltage Switching PFC and Regulator.

SmartEgg® is the EcoVoltas AC/DC architecture for medium-power applications that require Power Factor Correction (PFC). It is perfect for AC/DC power converters from 120W to 500W, achieving an extremely cost-effective Bill of Materials, high efficiency, and high power density.

SmartEgg offers a ZVS single-stage converter that can act as a PFC and an isolated regulator. This reduces the Bill of Materials by half, dramatically increases power density, and improves efficiency compared with traditional boost PFC + LLC resonant or AHB converters. SmartEgg is based on a proprietary magnetic component driven by a GaN half-bridge on the primary side.

Thanks to its innovative architecture, SmartEgg needs a single magnetic component for both PFC and regulation functionalities, which transfer energy to the secondary side in a quasi-forward mode. Because it does not store magnetic energy, SmartEgg reduces the size of transformers compared with Flyback and AHB architectures. Moreover, SmartEgg requires half the number of MOSFETs compared to Boost PFC + LLC and AHB converters. This leads to increased power density and extremely cost-effective converters.

Key features:

• Single-stage PFC + isolated regulator for 50% BOM reduction
• Forced Zero Voltage Switching (ZVS) under every load condition:
  • Up to 96% efficiency at full load
  • Up to 92% efficiency at light load

• Weak-coupling quasi-forward transformer (k < 1)
• Smaller size for up to 30W/in3 power density
• Available output options:
  • USB Power Delivery (USB PD 3.1)
  • Fixed voltage
  • CC CV battery charger
  • Multiport charger with dynamic balanced output power