Renesas Electronics has created what it claims is the space industry’s first radiation-hardened, low side Gallium Nitride (GaN) field effect transistor (FET) driver and GaN FETs that enable primary and secondary DC/DC converter power supplies in launch vehicles and satellites, as well as downhole drilling and high reliability industrial applications. These devices power ferrite switch drivers, motor control driver circuits, heater control modules, embedded command modules, 100V and 28V power conditioning, and redundancy switching systems.
The ISL7023SEH 100V, 60A GaN FET and ISL70024SEH 200V, 7.5A GaN FET use the base die manufactured by Efficient Power Conversion (EPC). The GaN FETs provide up to 10 orders of magnitude better performance than silicon MOSFETs while reducing package size by 50%. They also reduce power supply weight and achieve higher power efficiency with less switching power loss. At 5mΩ (RDSON) and 14nC (QG), the ISL70023SEH enables the industry’s best figure of merit (FOM). Both GaN FETs require less heat sinking due to reduced parasitic elements, and their ability to operate at high frequencies allows the use of smaller output filters, which achieve excellent efficiencies in a compact solution size. Manufactured using a MIL-PRF-38535 Class V-like flow, the ISL70023SEH and ISL70024SEH offer guaranteed electrical specifications over the military temperature range and lot-by-lot radiation assurance for high dose rate 100krad(Si) and low dose rate 75krad(Si).
