I. What is GaN?
Gallium Nitride (GaN: Gallium Nitride) is a compound of nitrogen and gallium, specific semiconductor properties, early application in light-emitting diodes, it belongs to the same elemental periodic group as the commonly used silicon, high hardness, high melting point and high stability. Gallium nitride material is an important semiconductor material for developing microelectronic devices, with wide band gap, high thermal conductivity and other characteristics, applied in chargers can be adapted to small transformers and high power devices, high charging efficiency.
2. The advantages and disadvantages of GaN chargers.
Advantages: small size and safety
Compared with common semiconductor silicon material, GaN has wider band gap and good thermal conductivity, which can match smaller transformer and high power inductor, so GaN charger has advantages of small size, high efficiency and more safety. In order to achieve faster charging speed, recent flagship cell phones and tablets have higher charger power, 40W50W chargers are very common. The larger charging power means the size of the charger is also getting bigger and generating serious heat. After switching to GaN technology, the size of the charger can be significantly reduced, which is very portable. At the same time, GaN charger can also maintain high efficiency and low temperature working condition, and better safety.
Disadvantage: high cost
The main disadvantage of GaN charger is its high cost. Gallium nitride is a new type of third generation compound, the synthesis environment is very demanding, in terms of manufacturing process, gallium nitride is not in liquid state, it can't be pulled out single crystal by traditional direct pulling method of monocrystalline silicon, it is purely synthesized by gas reaction, it takes half an hour to form powder gallium nitride by heating metal gallium in ammonia gas flow at more than 1000 degrees, so the cost of gallium nitride charger is higher, corresponding to the price of gallium nitride charger on the market is also higher than that of traditional charger. Therefore, the cost of gallium nitride chargers is higher, and the price of gallium nitride chargers on the market is higher than that of traditional chargers.