Modern power switches: the Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology

Silicon Power MOSFETs, with more than fifty years of development, are widely accepted and applied in power converters. Gallium Nitride (GaN) power devices are commercially available in recent years, but the device performance and application have not been fully developed. These devices include Schottky Barrier Diode (SBD) and P-I-N rectifiers,?? High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT), heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT). In this paper, these GaN devices are discussed and compared with Si devices and SiC devices, which were the candidates to replace Si devices for their capacity to support high power density and high temperature environments. SiC devices high cost reduced their usage which resulted in the growth of GaN-based power switches.