Recently, 36氪 was informed that Zhuhai Gallium Future Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Gallium Future”) announced the completion of the A+ round of financing of nearly 100 million yuan. financial consultant. So far, this comprehensive solution provider focusing on the R&D and production of high-end third-generation semiconductor gallium nitride power devices has raised more than 200 million yuan since its establishment one and a half years ago. This round of financing will be mainly used for the development of new products and application solutions for GaN power chips, and will also be used for supply chain construction.
Gallium Future was established in October 2020, dedicated to the research and development, design and production of high-end GaN power devices, providing customers with higher efficiency, smaller size, lower cost GaN-on-Si device products and overall solutions . Its products are not only used in mobile phone/notebook PD fast charging, but also realize medium and high power application scenarios. At present, a variety of 650V GaN products in the future have been mass-produced and sold, including 3 low-power GaN products and 2 high-power GaN products.
GaN is one of the core materials of the third-generation semiconductor materials, which has the characteristics of higher power density, smaller size and lower power consumption. Due to the high critical breakdown electric field and high electron mobility of gallium nitride materials, gallium nitride power devices have the characteristics of higher operating frequency and lower on-resistance at the same off-state blocking voltage level, and the electrical conversion loss is lower. Not only improve efficiency and save power, but also make the power supply smaller and achieve higher power density.
Since the rapid popularization of gallium nitride in mobile phone PD fast charging in 2018, the demand for low-power (represented by 65W) application scenarios has been continuously released, and the third-generation semiconductor gallium nitride power device track has entered a period of rapid growth. At present, the annual shipment volume of over 1 billion smartphones and over 200 million notebooks and other consumer electronics products has attracted major players such as PI, Navitas, Innoseco to join the battle for the low-power GaN power device market. middle.
In addition to the low-power scenarios that have been recognized by the market, Dr. Wu Yifeng, founder and chief scientist of Gallium Future, said: “Gallium nitride power devices are widely used in consumer electronics, communications, data centers, lighting, home appliances, servo motors, photovoltaics, new energy There are broad application prospects in fields such as automobiles and power systems, and 80-90% of the global power semiconductor application and manufacturing are in China, and the industrial soil is very good.” Wu Yifeng has been researching gallium nitride since the last century and has 112 invention patents. , After seeing the prospect of China’s power semiconductors, he chose to return to China to start a business.
According to China’s existing gallium nitride market demand and Wu Yifeng’s years of experience in high-end gallium nitride products, in the company’s development strategy, gallium will choose to start from low-power scenarios with existing market demand and high-power scenarios with thresholds , and then supplement the mid-power product line to complete the basic layout of each product line.
In 2021, Gallium Future will develop and mass-produce GaN switching device products suitable for 30-120W power adapters. Mobile phone/notebook fast charging products have received orders of millions of units, and the annual revenue exceeded 10 million. This year, customers are expanding from e-commerce, ODM manufacturers, and solution designers to brand customers, and continue to launch high-performance GaN power device products and overall power supply solutions suitable for low-power application scenarios such as 140W, 200W, and 330W.
GaN Layoutable Product Lines
Low-power products are the starting point for the future layout of gallium, but medium and high power (above 500W) is the focus of gallium’s future to reflect its own technical advantages and layout in the future.
At the beginning of its establishment, Gallium Future has cooperated with related enterprises of State Grid to develop 900V-level high-reliability gallium nitride switching devices suitable for smart meter power modules and State Grid industrial power modules, and plans to gradually introduce products in 2022. At present, there are hundreds of millions of power modules in China’s power grid, and the market size of application scenarios is considerable. According to the information provided by the company, Gallium Future is currently the first supplier in China that can mass-produce 900V-level GaN power devices that have passed the JEDEC reliability verification standard.
According to Dr. Wu Yifeng, high-power products are not only many low-power devices connected in parallel, which are difficult to superimpose, but also need to redesign the back-end metal structure and process to essentially improve the current capability. If the reliability of low-power products or the margin of gate withstand voltage is not enough, the possibility of success of high-power products is very small.
In addition, silicon materials have been developed for many years, and are satisfactory in practical indicators such as ease of use, reliability, price, and maturity of products. The emergence of gallium nitride has indeed improved performance, but it will expose problems in terms of practicality. Gallium nitride power devices are naturally not normally-off devices, and very-off devices are prone to overshoot or run out of control during the startup process of the application system. In response to the above problems, the mainstream structures for commercial use in the market include direct-drive type and normally-off type represented by p-GaN gates, each with its own advantages in technical routes. Brands taking these two technical routes are trying to deploy from low power to medium and high power, but more than 500W is still a difficult threshold to break through.
Gallium chooses to adopt a cascade structure design scheme in the future, and connect a normally-off low-voltage MOSFET in series to the source end of the normally-on GaN device to realize an enhancement-mode device. Through the optimized design and advanced packaging of device integration, the shortcomings of the traditional cascade structure are overcome, and high-speed and stable characteristics are achieved.
Using the natural normally-on characteristics of GaN can avoid the defects introduced by the process of manufacturing normally-off GaN devices. Coupled with advanced design and mature manufacturing technology, the future products of gallium have excellent dynamic characteristics and high reliability. Because its gate is a conventional Si-MOSFET, the gate has strong anti-noise and shock resistance, and is not only compatible with the gate drive of Si-based power switch circuits. And it can be packaged into a plug-in form, suitable for high-power application scenarios, and the application power range can cover 30W-6000W.
Gallium Future has achieved prototype development and testing of 800W to 3600W server power supplies and computing power supplies, and corresponding GaN products have been mass-produced. Dr. Wu Yifeng told 36Kr that Gallium Future is the only mass-produced manufacturer of 650V Gallium Nitride power devices in China that achieves 2000W-4000W high-efficiency power supplies that meet the titanium energy efficiency standard.
Bridgeless totem-pole PFC can greatly reduce rectification losses, which is a major feature of GaN power devices in high-efficiency power supply applications, but usually requires a high-cost digital signal processor (DSP). In April this year, Gallium Future jointly developed with its partners, and once again took the lead in realizing the industry’s first 700W intelligent mixed-signal bridgeless totem pole PFC + LLC mass-produced power supply solution using a control IC, which does not require DSP (digital processing chip). Its full load efficiency is as high as 96.72%, which is in line with 80PLUS titanium energy efficiency. This technology will accelerate the pace of application of gallium nitride.
(700W totem pole PFC+LLC power supply solution)
“We actually have the technical strength to make high-power chips of more than 6 kilowatts and mass-produce them, and have begun to deploy a new generation of medium and high-power technology platforms. It is expected that the new technology platform products can be mass-produced within two or three years, which is not only leading in China. , is also leading in the world.” Dr. Wu Yifeng said.
Regarding the positioning of its own development and R&D pattern, the future of gallium is not limited to the low-power field with mature products and solutions, nor is it limited to the field where the current three generations of semiconductors have advantages. It focuses on the entire power device industry. Traditional silicon devices have higher goals and prospects.
At present, the application scenarios of GaN power devices are expanding from low-power consumer electronics that are already in the Red Sea competition to medium and high-power energy storage, home appliances, power tools and other consumer electronics, and gradually to ICT (communication base stations, servers/mining machines) ), industrial control, new energy, photovoltaic, electric power and other industrial scenarios, the economic benefits and market potential should not be underestimated; in addition, gallium nitride power devices also have extremely high performance in improving energy efficiency and achieving carbon neutrality. Social value.
At the same time, Dr. Wu Yifeng believes: “Each product iteration is not only improved in performance, but also in cost. At present, the cost of gallium nitride power devices is 1.8-2 times that of Si MOSFET devices, and gallium is planned to be realized within three years in the future. The cost is greatly reduced. This is a key node to break the bottleneck of gallium nitride application. In the future, gallium is making efforts from two main aspects: R&D design and supply chain construction.”
At present, Gallium Future has started the research and development of the next-generation medium and high-power device platform, and plans to achieve a new breakthrough in the cost performance of domestic medium and high-power GaN power device products. The new R&D product technology platform can continue to increase the number of chips produced per wafer and achieve the goal of reducing costs by 50%.
In the wafer manufacturing process, gallium will rely on overseas fabs with a yield rate of more than 95% in the future to ensure the leading production process and cost at the international competition level, and will transfer the links that have localization alternative conditions to localization. After a year of research and development, gallium’s future products have gradually achieved domestic accessories and packaging testing, not only expanding production capacity, but also reducing costs by 20-30%.
Dr. Yifeng Wu, founder of Gallium Future Core and IEEE Fellow, has 26 years of technical accumulation in the field of gallium nitride. As a continuous successful entrepreneur, he has served as device scientist of Cree and senior vice president of Transphorm. He has led the team to develop and measure Produced the world’s first commercial GaN power devices above 600V, improving reliability to the industry’s leading level.
The company has nearly 70 employees, attracting talents from leading semiconductor companies in the industry such as Intel, TI, Silan Microelectronics, TPH, etc., and has completed the establishment of a chip development, packaging and testing, production import, reliability verification, quality control and application system. A complete team in all aspects of the program.
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Related events
- Gallium will complete nearly 100 million A+ financing in the future2022-05-26
- “Gallium Future” received tens of millions in Series A financing, led by Zhuhai Science and Technology Ventures2021-08-25
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