Optimizing Electric Vehicle Performance with GaN Design

A rapidly growing number of consumers are preferring electric vehicles as their primary mode of transport, in order to support the global drive to reduce fossil-fuel burning. These consumers are regularly finding that the vehicle manufacturer claims on driving-range from a full battery, performance, resell value, recycling, repair, insurance and other everyday criteria are unfortunately not being met. Many global companies and industries are part of the complex Electric Vehicle (EV) supply chain, including power electronics semiconductor designers. This paper focuses on the improvements that can be applied to GaN semiconductor design specifically, as a future automotive technology to improve the efficiency and performance of the power MOSFETs used in electric vehicle traction drives, on-board chargers, and DC-DC Inverters. Semiconductor device simulations are used to analyze the tradeoffs that can be made at the device and atomistic level, to improve conductivity, breakdown voltage performance, temperature effects and switching efficiency.