GaN FET drivers said to be smallest and fastest

Expanding on its industry-leading gallium nitride (GaN) power portfolio, Texas Instruments today announced two new high-speed GaN field-effect transistor (FET) drivers to create more efficient, higher-performing designs in speed-critical applications such as light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and 5G radio-frequency (RF) envelope tracking. The LMG1020 and LMG1210 can deliver switching frequencies of 50 MHz while improving efficiency and enabling five times smaller solution sizes previously not possible with silicon MOSFETs. For more information, see www.ti.com/lmg1020-prand www.ti.com/lmg1210-pr.

With an industry-best drive speed as well as a minimum pulse width of 1 ns, the LMG1020 60-MHz low-side GaN driver enables high-accuracy lasers in industrial LIDAR applications. The small wafer-level chip-scale (WCSP) package of only 0.8 mm by 1.2 mm helps minimize gate-loop parasitics and losses, further boosting efficiency.

The LMG1210 is a 50-MHz half-bridge driver designed for GaN FETs up to 200 V. The device’s adjustable dead time control feature is designed to improve efficiency by as much as 5 percent in high-speed DC/DC converters, motor drives, Class-D audio amplifiers as well as other power-conversion applications. Designers can achieve high system-noise immunity with the industry’s highest common-mode transient immunity (CMTI) of more than 300 V/ns.

Key features and benefits

• High speed: The two devices’ ultra-fast propagation delay (2.5 ns [LMG1020] and 10 ns [LMG1210]) enables power solutions that are 50 times faster than with silicon drivers. Additionally, the LMG1020 is capable of delivering high-power 1-ns laser pulses, enabling long-range LIDAR applications.
• High efficiency: Both devices enable high-efficiency designs. The LMG1210 offers a low switch-node capacitance of 1 pF and user-adjustable dead time control to improve efficiency by as much as 5 percent.
• Power density: The integrated feature of dead time control in the LMG1210 allows for reduced component count and higher efficiency, enabling designers to reduce power-supply size by as much as 80 percent. The increased power density of the LMG1020 enables the highest resolution in LIDAR in the industry’s smallest package.

The LMG1020 and LMG1210 are the latest additions to the industry’s largest GaN power portfolio, ranging from 200-V drivers to 80-V and 600-V power stages. With over 10 million hours of GaN process reliability testing, TI is addressing the need for proven and ready-to-use solutions through reliable GaN products, bringing decades of silicon manufacturing expertise and advanced device-development talent to GaN technology.