Gallium nitride charger advantages, disadvantages and application development

Recently, a new technology gallium nitride has attracted a wave of enthusiasm for chargers. Manufacturers are rapidly adopting gallium nitride chargers due to their small size and excellent efficiency. What exactly is gallium nitride, and how does it differ from other types of chargers?

What is GaN?

Gallium Nitride (GaN: Gallium Nitride) is a compound of nitrogen and gallium that has particular semiconductor properties and early application in light-emitting diodes. It belongs to the same elemental periodical group as frequently used silicon and has good hardness, melting point, and stability. Gallium Nitride is an important semiconductor material for the development of microelectronic devices, with a wide band gap, high thermal conductivity, and other properties, and is used in chargers that can be adapted to small transformers and high-power devices, as well as having high charging efficiency.

Advantages and disadvantages of gallium nitride chargers

Advantages: small size and safety

Compared with ordinary silicon materials, gallium nitride has a wider band gap and good thermal conductivity, so it can match smaller transformers and high-power inductors, so gallium nitride chargers have the advantages of small size, high efficiency, and safety. To achieve faster charging speeds, recent flagship mobile phones and tablets have higher power chargers, with 40W and 50W chargers being common. More power means bigger chargers and more heat.

By switching to gallium nitride technology, the size of the charger can be significantly reduced, making it very portable, and the gallium nitride charger can also maintain high efficiency and low-temperature operation, making it safer.

Disadvantage: high cost

The biggest drawback of gallium nitride chargers is their high price. Gallium nitride is a novel third-generation chemical that necessitates a high synthesis environment. Gallium nitride has no liquid state and cannot be extracted as a single crystal using the standard straight-pulling method of single-crystal silicon. As a result, the cost of gallium nitride chargers is higher, and the market price of gallium nitride chargers is higher than the price of ordinary chargers.

Gallium nitride charger application development

GaN chargers are sought after by digital manufacturers as soon as they arise, thanks to the growing technology in the charging business, and well-known mobile phone brands and third-party peripherals have begun to launch their own GaN chargers.

In addition to C-end consumer electronics, GaN also has great potential for application in the 5G field. 5G era needs many micro base stations and intermediate devices, these devices also need more efficient power supply capacity, and the advantage of GaN charger with small size and high efficiency will be obvious.