Infineon Technologies’ decision to pay $3bn for International Rectifier may have surprised the semiconductor industry, but the deal is all about acquiring a process technology.
That process technology is gallium nitride-on-silicon.
GaN-on-silicon, as it is called, is a hot commodity in the power electronics industry and IR has one of the few working GaN-on-silicon processes in production.
Why is the technology so hot at the moment?
For one thing it runs cool.
The recent NeuLandproject, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), concluded that SiC and GaN-on-silicon can halve the energy loss in switched mode power supplies for PCs and can increase the efficiency of power electronics by one third.
The project was directed by Infineon, which uses SiC in its Jfets and diodes for the 600V to 1700V voltage class primarily used in switched-mode power supplies for PCs or televisions and in motor drives.
With the IR acquisition, Infineon now has production ready GaN-on-silicon, the other piece in the jigsaw.
GaN-on-silicon technology is also a motivation behind Google’s $1m power inverter design challenge.
“We’re looking for someone to build a kW-scale inverter with a power density greater than 50W/inch3,” said the firm, which is suggesting wide bandgap semiconductors (GaN or SiC, for example) could be part of the answer.
The next big target application for GaN-on-silicon is to increase energy efficiency and reduce cost in the design of solar inverters.
However, the market is not ready for GaN-on-silicon yet. The cost of components will have to fall even more for wide-scale application in solar inverters, and that means further research is required on reliability, service lifetime and costs.
With the acquisition of IR, Infineon is making a statement that it believes in the future of GaN-on-silicon and sees an opportunity to become a market leader, but that will need a two-way fight with the other GaN powerhouse, Cree.
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