Why I think qGaN is a game changing technology

Winning a contract to develop a high-frequency, GaN-based Variable Frequency Drive (VFD, or "motor drive") for ABB?got a us lot of traction in the trade press this year. Compound Semiconductor magazine went as far as to say that we were?"Saving the planet with ultrafast GaN".

ABB are one of the world's largest suppliers of industrial electric motors, an $80 Bn market cap company and the lead sponsor of the FIA Formula E World Championship. They are also relatively conservative. So the news that they were looking to leapfrog the current "next-generation" of transistors (silicon carbide) and develop what will be (as far as we are aware) the world's first high-frequency gallium nitride (GaN) based motor drive is a big deal in the power electronics world.

Off the back of the PR, we have been contacted by a number of very large organisations in the power electronics world who want to take a closer look at our technology.

Nobody (again, I should add, as far as we are aware!) has used high-speed GaN to drive an electric motor because of the huge thermal and the electromagnetic issues that come with switching very small transistors very quickly (which you have to do to get the efficiency and the power density benefits).

Most of ABB's motor drives operate at around 4KHz. Our initial project is for a 1MHz motor drive (250x the frequency). Initially, this was really concerning for ABB's motor experts because high frequencies are really bad for electric motors! Motors like low frequencies (50Hz = 3000rpm). So their existing 4KHz VFDs are a bit of a compromise. It's not great for the motor, but filtering is hard and expensive at those lower frequencies. Essentially, in many applications, the motor itself acts as the filter, which isn't great for the motor (efficiency and longevity). But it's a compromise and saves on an expensive, bulky filter.

So, when motor experts at ABB heard about a 1MHz VFD, they thought that it sounded terrible for the motor! We had to explain that the VFD includes a very small (it can be small because of the frequency) filter that actually allows us to output an (almost) perfect sinusoidal, low-frequency sine wave to the motor. Once they understand this, they had their "lightbulb" moment and started to get excited about the additional benefits.

ABB have incredible test facilities for motors and drives. Later this year we will be flying our VFD out to the US and running through a detailed test plan with ABB. The data that comes out of those tests will be hugely important for driving the next stage of our growth, and helping to show the power electronics industry that high-frequency GaN transistors can deliver huge benefits when it comes to driving the world's electric motors. And that the thermal and electromagnetic issues?can?be overcome. You just have to take a very different approach to the traditional power electronics world's current ways of working and think outside the box to unleash GaN to the ultrafast speeds that it can now deliver with our solutions to the RF and overheating issues. Faster speeds means greater power efficiencies of 10% or, we believe, even more which will really impact world energy consumption (and CO2 production) as 45% is used by electric motors.

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James Cannings

Executive Chairman - QPT