A power semiconductor that can switch in both directions at 900 volts has moved from laboratory testing into a product development programme, aimed squarely at the electrical plant around AI servers.
Infineon is supplying the device, a gallium nitride monolithic bidirectional switch, to Enphase Energy. Enphase built the system-level demonstration and is folding it into its solid-state transformer, a module that replaces the bulky iron and copper transformers that step voltage down before power reaches a rack.
Solid-state transformers matter because they switch at high frequency, which shrinks the magnetics inside them. Silicon carbide has owned that high-voltage territory; extending gallium nitride to 900 volts widens the set of architectures a designer can consider, and integrated bidirectional switching removes parts from the circuit.
The companies have collaborated before on a lower-voltage device used in Enphase’s residential microinverters. The new part has passed testing and is now in product development, with production qualification still to come.
The same technology is expected to help commercial solar inverters, enabling fewer switches and lower losses in three-phase designs.
For the data centre, the constraint is no longer the chip alone. Getting kilowatts to the rack at high efficiency now sits on the critical path, and this is one of the parts that has to arrive for that to work.
