Power Integrations, a provider of high-voltage integrated circuits (ICs) for energy-efficient power conversion, has released the world’s highest-voltage, single-switch gallium-nitride (GaN) power supply IC, featuring a 1250 V PowiGaN switch. InnoSwitch3-EP 1250 V ICs are the newest members of Power Integrations’ InnoSwitch family of off-line CV/CC QR flyback switcher ICs, which feature synchronous rectification, FluxLink safety-isolated feedback and an array of switch options: 725 V silicon, 1,700 V silicon carbide, and PowiGaN in 750 V, 900 V and now 1,250 V varieties.
The switching losses for Power Integrations’ proprietary 1,250 V PowiGaN technology are less than a third of that seen in equivalent silicon devices at the same voltage. This results in power conversion efficiency as high as 93% — enabling highly compact flyback power supplies that can deliver up to 85 W without a heatsink.
Radu Barsan, vice president of technology at Power Integrations, said: "Power Integrations continues to advance the state of the art in high-voltage GaN technology development and commercial deployment, rendering even the best high-voltage silicon MOSFETs obsolete along the way. We were first to market with high-volume shipments of GaN-based power-supply ICs in 2019, and earlier this year introduced a 900-volt version of our GaN-based InnoSwitch products. Our ongoing development of higher voltage GaN technology, illustrated here by our new 1250 V devices, extends the efficiency benefits of GaN to an even wider range of applications, including many currently served by silicon-carbide technology.”
Designers using the new InnoSwitch3-EP 1250 V ICs can confidently specify an operating peak voltage of
Source: Power Integrations 1,000 V, which allows for industry-standard 80% de-rating from the 1,250 V absolute maximum. This provides significant headroom for industrial applications and is particularly valuable in challenging power grid environments where robustness is an essential defense against grid instability, surge and other power perturbations.
Availability and resources
Samples are available now; volume-shipment lead time for 1,250 V InnoSwitch3-EP ICs is 16 weeks. Pricing for InnoSwitch3-EP 1,250 V devices in the INSOP-24D package starts at $3.00 for 10,000-unit quantities. A reference design, DER-1025, describing a 12 V, 6 A flyback converter is available for free download.
