Or think about it this way: Each simple Internet search consumes enough electricity to light a 60-watt lightbulb for about 17 seconds. If you do these searches billions of times a day, that energy consumption will add up to billions of kilowatt hours (kWh).
The demand to manage energy more efficiently and achieve higher power densities in smaller spaces continues to grow. New technologies such as gallium nitride (GaN) can significantly improve many aspects of power management, production, and distribution to meet these demands.

By 2030, it is expected that about 80% of energy will be managed using power semiconductors, compared to 30% in 2005. This will save more than 3 billion kilowatt hours of energy, which is equivalent to the amount of electricity used by about 300,000 households annually.

From smartphone chargers to data centers, any device that draws power directly from the grid or handles high voltages in the hundreds of volts or uses innovative technologies like GaN to dramatically improve the efficiency and size of power management systems. In this regard, you can refer to our new white paper, ‘Taking Energy Efficiency to the Next Level with GaN’.

Finding the ideal switch
The core device of any power management system is the switch. The switch turns the power on and off, and it works the same way as the light switch on the wall of your house. But it is millions of times faster and smaller. Efficiency (low loss), reliability, functional integration, and economy are the important characteristics required for semiconductor power switches.

The search for the ideal switch is still ongoing. The ideal switch should have low 'on' resistance when conducting current, low leakage current when blocking current, and block a significant voltage between its terminals when in the off state.

Higher switching frequencies also allow engineers to reduce the size of the overall power conversion solution. Above all, semiconductor switches must be reliable and can be manufactured efficiently.

Silicon power switches have been continuously improving in power efficiency, switching speed, and reliability over the past few decades. Silicon devices successfully meet efficiency and switching frequency requirements at low voltages (<100 V) or high voltages (IGBTs and superjunction devices).

However, due to silicon limitations, not all of these characteristics can be satisfied in a single silicon power FET. Wide bandgap power transistors, such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC), can achieve high power efficiency at high voltages and switching frequencies beyond the limitations of silicon MOSFETs.

What GaN Can Do
Efficient high-frequency switches can reduce the size of power modules by 3x to 10x depending on the application, but require optimized driver and controller topologies. Totem-pole AC/DC converters are a topology that is not practical for silicon, but can achieve 3x higher power density by leveraging GaN’s low on-resistance, fast switching, and low output capacitance characteristics.

Resonant architectures such as zero-voltage switching and zero-current switching, which reduce switching losses and improve overall efficiency, can also take advantage of GaN’s superior switching characteristics. Many applications convert relatively high voltages, up to hundreds of volts, to lower voltages to power circuit components such as processors.

Switch-mode power converters with high input-to-output voltage ratios are inefficient. These power management blocks are usually composed of multiple power stages. Direct conversion from the intermediate 54/48 V bus to the processor core voltage can reduce system cost and improve efficiency.

GaN's excellent switching characteristics make it well suited for use in these direct conversion architectures. Direct conversion techniques are currently being studied for server power management in data center applications.

The efficiency and fast switching of GaN technology can also be leveraged for applications such as laser drivers for LIDAR in autonomous vehicles, wireless charging, and envelope tracking (ET) using high-efficiency power amplifiers in 5G base stations.

GaN power devices can achieve much higher power densities by reducing conduction losses and enabling higher switching frequencies. However, this does not make thermal management or parasitic issues any easier.

Packing more power into a smaller space presents new challenges related to heat generation and packaging. As the die surface area decreases, conventional packaging techniques may have limitations, so three-dimensional heat spreading techniques are being proposed for GaN packaging.

A greener life
To eliminate cost and high-volume cycles, new power semiconductor technologies must overcome the shortcomings of current devices in demanding applications. GaN can provide power beyond the limits of silicon in high-voltage applications. Inverters used in industrial motor drives or grid-connected energy storage systems can immediately take advantage of the higher power that GaN devices provide.

GaN will bring new outstanding characteristics and bring new value and opportunities for future power management. The bidirectional structure of GaN devices uses a dual-gate structure to control current flow, unlike conventional PN junction MOSFETs.

Bidirectional devices can be used as matrix converters in motor drives to reduce the number of switches. Additionally, GaN devices can operate at higher temperatures than silicon devices, making them advantageous for use in many high-temperature applications, such as integrated motor drives.

The future impact of innovative technologies like GaN is significant. As power losses decrease, fewer new power plants need to be built to meet growing power demand. Higher power density means smaller sizes.

Then, battery-powered circuits such as electric cars, drones, and robots can be used more efficiently for longer periods of time. Data centers with thousands of servers can also be operated more efficiently so that we can communicate with our friends and colleagues. Thus, we can live a more eco-friendly life.