Dan Kinzer
CTO, Navitas Semiconductor

Biography

Gallium Nitride offers tremendous advantages for power electronics, with it’s wide bandgap, high critical electric field, high mobility, high current density, low capacitance, and high switching speed. GaN high voltage power devices on silicon substrates are now mature in high volume, low cost production CMOS fabs. Innovative circuit design and an advanced design environment combine to deliver GaN power ICs that simplify power supply designs and advance the state of the art in density and efficiency. Integration allows switching loss to be driven close to zero, while providing voltage control and protection for the sensitive gate electrode. These power ICs demonstrate excellent reliability for consumer and industrial applications. A family of devices that are perfectly targeted to consumer adapter applications is now available with fully developed solutions suitable for high volume adoption. An ecosystem for these solutions is established, including high frequency optimized application-specific control ICs, inductors, transformers, and EMI filters. Key GaN Power IC features will be described, and the advantages will be demonstrated in some of the world’s smallest and most efficient USB-PD chargers.

Abstract

Dan Kinzer is COO, CTO, Co-founder and Director of Navitas Semiconductor, a young company focused on advanced GaN power semiconductor devices and circuits. For over 25 years, Dan has led R&D at leading power semiconductor companies at the VP level or higher. His experience includes developing advanced power device and IC platforms, wide bandgap GaN and SiC device design, IC and power device fabrication processes, advanced IC design, semiconductor package development and assembly processes, and design of electronic systems. Before Co-founding Navitas, Dan served 7 years as SVP & CTO at Fairchild Semiconductor. Before that he served 28 years at International Rectifier in various roles including VP R&D and Chief Technologist. He has a BSE degree in Engineering Physics from Princeton University.