Nitronex, a leader in the design and manufacture of gallium nitride (GaN) based RF solutions for high performance applications in the defense, communications, cable TV, and industrial & scientific markets, has fully-qualified the robust NPT1015 transistor. The NPT1015 is a 28V, DC to 2.5 GHz, 50 W power transistor with 15 dB saturated gain and 65% peak drain efficiency at 2 GHz. The thermal resistance of the NPT1015 transistor is 1.9°C/W, which is among the lowest in the industry in this power class. This GaN technology is capable of surviving the industry’s most severe robustness tests without significant device degradation.
Developed under an entirely new design process, the NPT1015 leverages Nitronex’s existing 28 V NRF1 process platform, which has been in volume production since 2009. One hundred NPT1015 devices from four wafers were subjected to a 15:1 VSWR at all phase angles with 90°C base plate temperature. During VSWR testing, all devices operated in a saturated average power condition driven by a 4000 carrier 200MHz wideband signal with a 19.5 dB peak-to-average ratio. The devices showed 100% survivability and only ~0.2 dB average change in saturated output power.
“The NPT1015 is a robust next-generation product, as it incorporates significant thermal management improvements that increase breakdown and lowers thermal impedance. We are using these same techniques in our new 48 V product line. Nitronex is very excited about the advancements in product robustness and reliability that put our GaN-on-Si devices on par or ahead of competitive products that primarily use GaN-on-SiC,” said Greg Baker, president and CEO at Nitronex.
Nitronex’s patented SIGANTIC® GaN-on-Si process is the only production-qualified GaN process using an industry standard 4” silicon substrate. This results in a robust, scalable supply chain and positions Nitronex well for the growth expected from emerging GaN markets such as military communications, broadband, RADAR, commercial wireless, satellite communications and point to point microwave. Fully-qualified NPT1015 transistors are now available from stock to 12 weeks, and can be purchased through the Nitronex sales channel and distribution.
