- Legal name
- Navitas Semiconductor Corporation
- Founded
- 2014
- Incorporated
- Delaware, 2020The listed holding company. The operating business dates from 2014.
- Headquarters
- Torrance, California, United States
- Public listing
- Nasdaq — ticker NVTS
- Capability layer
- Power conversion
- Product areas
- Gallium nitride power ICs · Silicon carbide devices · Digital isolators
- Relevance to charging products
- GaN power ICs used in compact, high-power-density chargersWhether a given charger uses them is a design decision the vendor does not disclose per product.
- Website
- navitassemi.com
- Directory status
- Listed company — compiled from public information. Not a member.
What the company does
Navitas Semiconductor designs power semiconductors. The business was founded in 2014 and is headquartered in Torrance, California. Its listed holding company, Navitas Semiconductor Corporation, is incorporated in Delaware and trades on Nasdaq under the ticker NVTS — a distinction worth keeping, because the founding date of the business and the incorporation date of the listed entity are not the same thing.
The main product line is gallium nitride (GaN) power ICs, which integrate the GaN power device with its drive, control, sensing and protection circuits on a single chip. The company also develops silicon carbide devices and digital isolators.
Where it sits in the chain
Power conversion is the fourth layer of the industry map. It determines efficiency, thermal density and physical size — which is to say, it determines how small a charger can be for a given output.
GaN's contribution sits at the switching stage. A device that switches faster loses less energy in each transition, so there is less heat to remove, and less magnetics and heatsinking material needed to remove it. That is the mechanism behind the smaller enclosures that appeared for the same wattage.
What to check when sourcing at this layer
GaN is not a quality grade. It is a material choice with trade-offs. A GaN design is smaller and more efficient at high switching frequencies; it is not automatically safer, and it is not automatically longer-lived, than a well-executed silicon design. "GaN" on a product page says something about the switching device and nothing about the rest of the circuit.
Efficiency figures are meaningless without conditions. A quoted efficiency number is only comparable when the load point, the input voltage and the ambient temperature are stated. A peak figure taken at one favourable load point is not the efficiency a user experiences across a real charging cycle, and two products quoting different peaks may rank in the opposite order under a common load.
Thermal behaviour is the binding constraint. A smaller enclosure has less surface area through which to lose heat. Reducing switching loss helps, but whether a product holds its full rated power after twenty minutes still depends on the thermal design of the whole product, not on the semiconductor alone.
GaN chargers explained covers the longer version of this.
Note on this entry
This entry was compiled by the alliance from the public sources listed below. It was not supplied, reviewed or approved by the company. Navitas Semiconductor is not a member of the alliance, and listing is not an endorsement, a recommendation or an approval of any product.
The alliance has not tested any product and does not know which chargers use devices from this company. Where that matters, ask the supplier for the bill of materials rather than inferring it from a marketing claim.
Sources
This entry was compiled by the alliance from the public sources listed below. It was not supplied, reviewed or approved by the company.