THE power gadgets waste when converting alternating current to direct current could be cut by a third by switching to converters that use gallium nitride transistors instead of silicon ones.
These transistors will also make adaptors small enough to fit inside a laptop – doing away with the need to carry a separate adaptor, says a team at Fujitsu Laboratories in Kawasaki, Japan.
The circuitry that creates a stable direct current from an AC source relies on transistors that can switch quickly from a state that conducts current to one that blocks it. Conventional silicon transistors can lose a significant amount of power through current leakage during this process because the material’s properties break down at high voltages.
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But gallium nitride (GaN) has a much higher breakdown voltage – and that minimises these leaks. GaN transistors also operate at a higher frequency, which would allow manufacturers to shrink the size of an adaptor’s transformer coils. This should allow adaptors to be reduced to one-tenth of today’s size by 2011.
Fujitsu’s first application will be in huge power-guzzling data centres, where the firm claims it will be able to reduce total power consumption by about 12 per cent.
