Comparison of GaAs and silicon synchronous rectifiers in a 3.3 V out, 50 W DC-DC converter

An experimental GaAs vertical FET is compared to a state-of-the-art silicon MOSFET for low-voltage synchronous rectification. Laboratory data show GaAs to perform significantly better, and a normalized cost analysis reveals that the GaAs VFET can potentially offer higher performance at lower cost than silicon.