Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd has developed a new structure for gallium-nitride (GaN) high electron-mobility transistors (HEMT) that can minimize power loss in power supplies, enabling reduced power consumption of electronic equipment such as IT hardware and home electronics. The new technology blocks the flow of current from power supplies in stand-by mode and produces high-density current when turned on ("on-state current"), and has the potential to cut power consumption of electronic equipment by one-third. If applied to data centers, Fujitsu's latest GaN HEMTs would be able to reduce total power consumption by 12 percent, thereby resulting in the effect of removing 330,000 tons of CO
2 from Japan as a whole.
The on-state voltage of the new transistor reaches +3V, which can easily be applied to power supplies while achieving a current density of 829mA/mm—double that of the transistor design on which the new transistor is based—resulting in high current values. Among transistors that can achieve an on-state voltage of at least +2V and completely interrupt current when off, Fujitsu's new transistor features the world's highest on-state current density, making it the first GaN HEMT in the world that has the characteristics required for power supply.
With the new transistor in power supplies, power loss can be reduced to one-third (1/3) that of power supplies based on conventional silicon transistors. Additionally, the high-frequency performance of the new transistors would enable more compact power supplies. High-speed transistor operation would allow for more compact coils and transformers, which have been particularly difficult to miniaturize in conventional power supplies with low-frequency operation: the size of AC adapters for notebook PCs, for example, could be reduced to one-tenth (1/10) the current sizes.
Fujitsu Laboratories
Fujitsu
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