IT之家 ITHome news on 10/6: Renesas Electronics today announced the launch of the company's first low-voltage gallium nitride power semiconductor products. The products introduced this time belong to the 100V enhancement-mode (E-mode) GaN discrete power transistor series,targeting application fields such as AI data centers, humanoid robots, factory automation, and industrial motor drives。
IT之家 has learned that the products Renesas launched this time are RTP100E005G1FL, RTP100E2P6G1FL, RTP100E1P8G1FL-DSC and RTP100E1P2G1FL-DSC, which have relatively superior hard-switching and soft-switching figure-of-merit (FOM) performance. Compared with similar GaN devices,hard-switching FOM is reduced by up to 35%，soft-switching FOM is reduced by up to 63%. The low-voltage GaN devices also maintain package dimensions compatible with silicon devices, making it easy to adopt them in existing designs.
At the same time, this product series improves efficiency by 1% to 3% compared with silicon-based designs, eliminates Qrr losses, and reduces switching losses substantially by 40% to 70%. A variety of standard MOSFET-compatible packages are provided, enabling customers to quickly migrate from silicon MOSFET layouts to GaN solutions without major PCB redesigns.
Further reading
Gallium nitride (GaN) is a wide-bandgap semiconductor material with a bandgap of approximately 3.4 electron volts, far higher than silicon's approximately 1.12 electron volts, and a critical breakdown electric field about 10 times that of silicon. GaN power devices conduct through the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) formed by polarization effects at the AlGaN / GaN heterojunction interface, achieving low-resistance conduction without doping, and thus feature faster switching speeds, lower gate charge, and output capacitance; meanwhile, GaN devices have no body diode, and reverse conduction relies on channel turn-on, so the reverse recovery charge (Qrr) is nearly zero.
GaN power devices are mainly divided into two technical routes: enhancement-mode (E-mode) and depletion-mode (D-mode) cascode. Enhancement-mode GaN achieves a positive threshold voltage by modulating the two-dimensional electron gas through the gate structure; depletion-mode GaN is inherently a normally-on device and must be co-packaged with a low-voltage silicon MOSFET to form a normally-off cascode structure, which offers higher drive voltage withstand and stronger interference immunity. Renesas' previous GaN products were mostly based on the depletion-mode SuperGaN technology of Transphorm, which it acquired; this 100V product is its first enhancement-mode (E-mode) GaN discrete device.
The figure of merit (FOM, Figure of Merit) mentioned in the article is a common metric for measuring the overall performance of power devices, commonly in the form of the product of on-resistance and gate charge (RDS (on)×Qg); a lower value usually means higher switching frequencies can be supported at the same losses, or lower losses at the same frequency. For silicon MOSFETs this metric is generally around 1000mΩ·nC, whereas for GaN devices it is only about 50 to 100mΩ·nC.
Renesas Electronics completed the acquisition of the American GaN power semiconductor manufacturer Transphorm on 2024/6/20, thereby entering the field of GaN power devices, and at the same time launched 15 successful GaN-based product portfolio reference designs. In 2025/7, Renesas released the 650V fourth-generation enhancement-mode (Gen IV Plus) GaN FET based on the SuperGaN platform, targeting kilowatt-class applications such as AI data centers, server power supplies, and electric vehicle charging; this 100V low-voltage product is its first extension of GaN technology into the low-voltage domain.