50% charge in 5 minutes! How powerful is the much-hyped GaN fast charging?

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50% charge in 5 minutes! How powerful is the much-hyped GaN fast charging? [Copy link]

Nowadays, everyone's life is inseparable from mobile phones. For some people, tablets or computers are also essential tools for their lives and work. People have no energy if they don't eat, and electronic products certainly can't run out of power. However, due to the limitations of current battery technology, the batteries of mobile phones and other electronic products generally cannot support a day's use, so charging is something everyone does every day.

In order to solve the problem of battery life, various digital brands have continuously increased the size of batteries and adopted faster charging solutions. In 2015, the OPPO mobile phone advertising slogan "Charge for five minutes, talk for two hours" really made the concept of "fast charging" first appear in the minds of the general public.

In addition, with the popularity of mobile phones, tablets, and computers, the number of electronic devices owned by each person is increasing, and the number of electronic devices in each family or collective environment is also increasing. Due to the above two reasons, consumers need a multi-port, higher-power charger.

Faced with this market demand, various digital accessory manufacturers have launched their own multi-port chargers, but they all encounter problems such as heat dissipation difficulties, large size, and poor portability. In this dilemma, the new material gallium nitride has begun to be used in chargers.

Gallium Nitride and Its Characteristics

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a compound of nitrogen and gallium. It has specific semiconductor properties and was used in light-emitting diodes in the early days. It belongs to the same element periodic family as commonly used silicon. It has high hardness, high melting point and strong stability. Gallium nitride material is an important semiconductor material for the development of microelectronic devices. It has the characteristics of wide band gap and high thermal conductivity. It can be used in chargers to adapt to small transformers and high-power devices, and has high charging efficiency. It is a third-generation semiconductor device.

Compared with silicon materials of ordinary semiconductors, gallium nitride has a wider bandgap and better thermal conductivity, which can match smaller transformers and high-power inductors, so gallium nitride chargers have the advantages of small size, high efficiency, and greater safety. In order to achieve faster charging speeds, recent flagship mobile phones and tablets have relatively high charger power. 40W50W chargers are very common, and the size of the chargers is also getting larger, and the heat is serious.

After switching to gallium nitride technology, the size of the charger can be greatly reduced, making it very portable. At the same time, the gallium nitride charger can also maintain high efficiency and low temperature working conditions, making it safer.

The main disadvantage of gallium nitride chargers is their high cost. The synthesis environment requirements are very high. From the manufacturing process point of view, gallium nitride is not in liquid form, and single crystals cannot be pulled out using the traditional direct-pull method of single crystal silicon. It is synthesized purely by gas reaction. Metal gallium must be heated at more than 1000 degrees in an ammonia flow for half an hour to form powdered gallium nitride. Therefore, the cost of gallium nitride chargers is higher, and the corresponding gallium nitride chargers on the market are also much higher than traditional chargers.

Market Applications of GaN

Mobile phone brands and third-party accessory manufacturers have begun to launch their own GaN chargers. Currently, dozens of mainstream power supply manufacturers have opened up GaN fast charging product lines and launched hundreds of new GaN fast charging products. Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Meizu, Samsung, ZTE, Nubia, Meizu, realme, Dell, Lenovo and many other well-known mobile phone/laptop brands have entered the market one after another, and Apple will also launch GaN fast charging in 2021.

In addition to charging mobile phones of different brands, it can also charge laptops, tablets, game consoles and other devices, making it especially suitable for users of the entire Apple family.

Laptops are the next breakthrough point for GaN chargers.

In addition to C-end consumer electronics, gallium nitride also has great potential for application in the 5G field. The 5G era will require many micro base stations and intermediate equipment. These devices also require more efficient power supply capabilities, and the advantages of gallium nitride chargers with small size and high efficiency will be obvious.

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