CGD enhances thermal performance and inspection with expanded ICeGaN series

“These new packages are part of our strategy to enable customers to use our ICeGaN GaN power ICs at higher power levels.”

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Cambridge GaN Devices (CGD) has expanded its ICeGaN series. The clean-tech semiconductor company’s series of GaN power ICs, which aim to improve thermal performances and inspection processes, has added two new DFN-style packages that claim to be rugged and reliable.

“These new packages are part of our strategy to enable customers to use our ICeGaN GaN power ICs at higher power levels. Servers, data centres, inverters/motor drives, micro-inverters and other industrial applications are all beginning to enjoy the power density and efficiency benefits that GaN brings, but they are also more demanding,” said Nare Gabrielyan, Product Marketing Manager at CGD. “Therefore, it is essential for such applications that devices are also rugged and reliable, and easy to design in. These attributes are inherent in ICeGaN and are supported and extended by the new packages.”

DHDFN-9-1

A thin, dual-side cooling package, the DHDFN-9-1 (Dual Heat-spreader DFN) has a small 10x10 mm footprint with wettable flanks which aims to help simplify optical inspection. With low thermal resistance, the device can be operated with bottom-side, top-side, and dual-side cooling, offering greater flexibility. Additionally, the DNDFN-9-1 has a dual-gate pinout design which facilitates optimal PCB layout and simple paralleling with the user able to address applications up to 6 kW.

BHDFN-9-1

Like the DHDFN-9-1, the Bottom Heat-spreader DFN (BHDFN-9-1) features wettable flanks and is also 10x10 mm but has a bottom-side cooling package. The second new addition offers a thermal resistance of 0.28 K/W and is smaller than the commonly used TOLL packages. However, the similar layout potentially offers greater ease of use and evaluation.

By improving thermal resistance performance, the user can experience an enhanced power output while the devices run at cooler temperatures. This can lead to less heatsinking being needed which lowers running costs. Additional benefits to reliability and the predicted lifespan of products can also be expected.