IT News on October 6th: Renesas Electronics announced today the launch of its first low-voltage gallium nitride power semiconductor product. The newly introduced product belongs to the 100V enhanced E-mode GaN discrete power transistor series, targeting applications such as AI data centers, humanoid robots, factory automation, and industrial motor drives.
IT Home has learned that the products launched by Renesas this time include RTP100E005G1FL, RTP100E2P6G1FL, RTP100E1P8G1FL-DSC, and RTP100E1P2G1FL-DSC. The company stated that these products perform superiorly in terms of hard-switching and soft-switching efficiency (FOM). Compared to similar GaN devices, hard-switching FOM can achieve a maximum reduction of 35%, while soft-switching FOM can achieve a maximum reduction of 63%. The low-voltage GaN devices also maintain a packaging size compatible with silicon devices, facilitating integration into existing designs.
At the same time, compared to silicon-based designs, this series of products offers a 1% to 3% increase in efficiency and eliminates Qrr losses, with switching losses reduced by a significant 40% to 70%. The company states that these products come with a variety of standard MOSFET compatible packages, allowing customers to quickly migrate from silicon MOSFET layouts to GaN solutions without the need for major redesigns of PCB.
Extended reading shows that gallium nitride ( GaN ) belongs to wide-bandgap semiconductor materials, with a bandgap width of approximately 3.4 electron volts, which is much higher than silicon's 1.12 electron volts. The critical breakdown electric field is about 10 times that of silicon. GaN Power devices rely on the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) formed at the AlGaN / GaN heterojunction interface due to polarization effects for conduction, allowing for low-resistance conduction without the need for doping. As a result, they have faster switching speeds, lower gate charge, and lower output capacitance; moreover, GaN These devices do not have a body diode, and reverse conduction depends on the channel being turned on, with the reverse recovery charge ( Qrr ) being almost zero.
Gallium nitride power devices are mainly divided into two technical routes: enhanced-type ( E-mode ) and depletion-type ( D-mode ) common-source common-gate ( Cascode ). Enhanced-type GaN achieves a positive threshold voltage through gate structure modulation of the two-dimensional electron gas; depletion-type GaN is inherently a normally-on device and needs to be packaged together with low-voltage silicon MOSFET to form a normally-off common-source common-gate structure, which has higher drive voltage tolerance and stronger interference resistance. Renesas' previous GaN products were mostly based on the depletion-type SuperGaN technology acquired from Transphorm; this 100V product, however, is its first enhanced-type ( E-mode ) GaN discrete device.
The values mentioned in the text ( FOM, Figure, of, Merit ) are commonly used indicators to measure the comprehensive performance of power devices. The common form is the product of the on-resistance and the gate charge ( RDS ( on ) × Qg ), etc. A lower value generally indicates that a higher switching frequency can be supported under the same loss conditions, or lower losses at the same frequency. For silicon MOSFET, this indicator is typically around 1000 mΩ· nC, while for GaN devices, it is only about 50 to 100 mΩ· nC.
Renesas Electronics completed the acquisition of Transphorm, a US-based GaN power semiconductor manufacturer, on June 20, 2024. This move enabled the company to enter the GaN power device market and simultaneously launched 15 reference designs for successful products based on GaN. In July 2025, Renesas introduced its 650V fourth-generation enhanced GaN FET based on the SuperGaN platform, targeting applications such as AI data centers, server power supplies, and electric vehicle charging that require several kilowatts of power; this 100V low-voltage product marks the company's first extension of GaN technology into the low-voltage domain.
