News: Microelectronics
14 September 2022
EPC opens motor drive design application center in Italy
Efficient Power Conversion Corp (EPC) of El Segundo, CA, USA – which makes enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN) power field-effect transistors (FETs) and integrated circuits for power management applications – has opened a new design application center near Turin, Italy, to focus on growing motor drive applications based on GaN technology in the e-mobility, robotics, drone and industrial automation markets. The specialist team will support customers in accelerating their design cycles and define future ICs for power management with state-of-the art equipment to test applications from 400W to 10s of kW.
Strategically located, Turin has a historical tradition in electric motors and motor drives, enabling the firm to draw on the local technical talent. EPC says that its engineers are helping customers to reduce their design cycle times and adopt GaN for more efficient, smaller, lower-cost systems. Moreover, the center is exploring ways to exploit the potential of EPC’s GaN technology in motor drive applications to enable a substantial increase in the efficiency of the motor, leading to higher-power-density designs than what has been possible with historically MOSFET-based designs.
Turin also features the Power Electronics Innovation Centre, a cross-department entity in the Politecnico di Torino, and EPC is collaborating closely with PEIC by investing in shared research and development.
“Our new facility combines a comprehensive GaN product portfolio and design expertise offering customers a center of excellence that is unrivalled for motor drive applications,” says new facility’s head, EPC’s director of motor systems and applications Marco Palma. “Its location is key too, as Europe is driving the green revolution in the e-mobility market, by using the Euro 7 standard in the short term and by banning internal combustion engines by 2035. This is definitely the right time to invest in higher-power-density motor solutions that avoid unnecessary energy waste.”
