Sunday 18 December 2016

Is there a reason GaN chargers stop at 65W?


During the last year or so we have seen commercial release of USB chargers utilizing GaN technology. For some reason it seems no products go higher than 65W. The Navitas reference platform was 65W, Delta released a 65W under the Innergie brand -- but nothing higher. Is there a technology reason for this? USB C goes up to 100W and 87W is reasonably popular because Apple shipped some of their MacBooks with such and so it's easier to market those as replacement.



Answer



If the input power of the adapter is less than 75W, you don't need a power factor correction stage (by EU and other regulations).


So they are easier to design, and they hit the largest segment of the market.


Once you need a 2 stage converter you have additional components and thermal considerations and GAN probably doesn't make as big a performance and size difference as it does with a single stage converter.


There are single stage PFC converters, but they suffer from various performance issues.



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