A better and cheaper replacement for silicon has been found

Jul 29, 2015 13:10 GMT  ·  By

Scientists at Cambridge Electronics managed to test what would very well be the next semiconductor for power electronics, the Gallium Nitride (GaN).

After two years and $70 million (€63 million) spent researching GaN in an effort to reduce worldwide energy consumption, the Cambridge Electronics managed to develop a line of GaN transistors and power electronics can could cut energy usage in data centers, electric cars and consumer devices by 10 to 20 percent by 2025.

All the power electronics like a laptop's power adapter or any electronic substations that convert electricity to higher or lower voltages and distribute electricity to consumers use silicon transistors that switch on and off to regulate voltage. Unfortunately, due to speed and resistance constraints, wasted energy came out as heat.

Serving the "primal forces of nature"

The GaN advantage is that it has at least one-tenth of the resistance of silicon-based transistors, therefore it allows higher energy efficiency, and much faster-switching frequency, this directly means smaller power adapters for your laptops. Besides such trivial improvements, other much bigger and more financially justifiable applications will enjoy the new GaN transistors. This is the case of data centers run by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other companies that will have much better (read cheaper) power electronics to help them power the cloud.

Besides this major, and probably main application, electric cars will also enjoy greatly improved power electronics, since the silicon-based ones from before will be replaced by new Gallium Nitride ones. Reducing the size of their overall power supply unit will make the cars more power efficient, lighter, and of course, it will have much better autonomy.

Cambridge Electronics claimed that it built the latest Gallium Nitride transistors in the very conventional silicon foundries with the same cost it fabricates silicon. The researchers believe the cost is the same, but the performance of the new devices is 100 times better.