The ISL7023SEH and ISL70024SEH GaN FETs. Source: RenesasRenesas Electronics Corp. has introduced what it claims is the first radiation-hardened, low side gallium nitride (GaN) field effect transistor (FET) driver and GaN FETs that enable primary and secondary DC/DC converter power supplies in launch vehicles and satellites.

The devices power ferrite switch drivers, motor control driver circuits, heater control modules, embedded command modules, 100 V and 28 V power conditioning and redundancy switching systems.

The ISL7023SEH 100 V, 60A GaN FET and the ISL70024SEH 200 V, 7.5A GaN FET provide up to 10 orders of magnitude better performance than silicon MOSFETs while reducing package size by 50 percent, Renesas says. The power supplies also reduce weight and achieve higher power efficiency with less switching power loss.

The ISL70040SEH low side GaN FET driver powers the ISL7002xSEH GaN FETs with a regulated 4.5 V gate drive voltage and splits the outputs to adjust FET turn-on and turn-off speeds. Operating with a supply voltage of 4.5 V to 13.2 V, the FET driver provides high current source and sink capability for high frequency operation, while offering both inverting and non-inverting gate drive to provide flexibility in power supply designs.

The ISL70040SEH provides reliable performance when exposed to total ionizing dose (TID) or heavy ions, and is immune to destructive single event effects (SEE) up to 16.5 V with linear energy transfer (LET) of 86MeV•cm2/mg. The GaN FET driver uses a MIL-PRF-38535 Class V manufacturing flow and wafer-by-wafer radiation assurance testing.

The rad-hard ISL70023SEH 100 V, 60A GaN FET and ISL70024SEH 200 V, 7.5A GaN FET are available now in hermetically sealed 4-lead 9.0 mm x 4.7 mm SMD packages.