The power electronics industry is undergoing a quiet revolution — one measured not in products but in materials. Gallium Nitride (GaN) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) wide-bandgap semiconductors are displacing conventional silicon MOSFETs and IGBTs in high-performance power conversion applications, and the implications for EV charging efficiency are profound.
Why Wide-Bandgap?
Silicon has dominated power electronics for decades. But it has fundamental limits — particularly at higher voltages, temperatures, and switching frequencies. GaN and SiC overcome these limits:
- Higher switching frequency: GaN can switch at 1 MHz vs ~100 kHz for silicon, enabling smaller passives and higher power density
- Lower on-resistance: SiC has ~10× lower RDS(on) per unit area versus silicon at equivalent voltage ratings
- Higher temperature operation: SiC devices operate reliably at junction temperatures up to 175°C
- Reduced switching losses: Lower energy loss per switching cycle translates directly to higher efficiency
AneVa's R&D Platform
Our 50 kW GaN-SiC R&D Power Platform is specifically designed to evaluate and validate next-generation wide-bandgap switching topologies under real-world EV charging conditions. The platform features dedicated GaN driver circuits, SiC half-bridge modules, and advanced calorimetric loss measurement instrumentation.
Research conducted on this platform directly informs our next-generation commercial module designs. We expect to incorporate SiC switching stages into our 50 kW ACDC production modules within the next development cycle, targeting efficiency improvements of 1.5–2 percentage points over current silicon-based designs.