In an interview with TimesTech, Vivek Mahajan, Vice President Technical Marketing – Asia Pacific, Infineon Technologies, Singapore, shared insights into Infineon’s GaN Road Show in India. Highlighting GaN’s pivotal role in energy-efficient and compact power solutions, he elaborated on its advantages, scalability efforts, and sustainability impact—while unveiling Infineon’s three-pronged strategy to drive innovation, partnerships, and talent development across the region.
Read the full interview here:
TimesTech: Infineon’s GaN Road Show in India has attracted significant attention—what are the key objectives behind this flagship event, and how does it align with Infineon’s broader vision for GaN technology?
Vivek: As the pioneers & market leaders in Power Semiconductor technologies, Infineon offers devices built with on all three materials Si, SiC and GaN. Each one has its unique merits in different applications. With the roadshow dedicated to GAN we want to share with our customers in India the advancements in GaN technology as well as our experience in developing reference application designs. This may be of great help at this initial stage of development with GaN.
TimesTech: GaN is increasingly viewed as a game-changer in power electronics. From Infineon’s perspective, what are the most critical advantages of GaN over traditional silicon-based solutions?
Vivek: First, GaN based power electronic circuits offer significant advantages over traditional silicon based solutions using higher switching frequency thereby enabling higher efficiency and eventually realizing smaller, lighter and cheaper designs for our customers.
Second, the use of silicon based bi-directional switch configuration was not commercially viable in certain topologies, however, with the help of GaN based monolithic bi-directional switches (BDS) – high efficiency, novel and compact topologies can become commercially viable.
TimesTech: How is Infineon addressing the challenges of scalability and cost-effectiveness when it comes to GaN adoption in industrial, consumer, and communication applications?
Vivek: Infineon is heavily investing in GaN manufacturing, being the first to produce GaN on 300mm wafers. The capacities planned as well, primarily in-house capacity, demonstrates clearly Infineon’s wish to be the prominent player and ensuring supply chain security for our customers. On the technology side Infineon will continue with the two GaN technology variants (Gate Injection technology as well as Schottky barrier diode) giving customer further choice for their varied applications.
TimesTech: Given your extensive experience across India, Singapore, and China, how do you see the Asia-Pacific region influencing global trends in GaN development and deployment?
Vivek: Today the Asia Pacific region is not a follower in adopting new technologies, and we see several of our customers already developing & launching several GaN based products. Mobile and laptop adapter/chargers was he first applications to achieve high volumes in AP. Now we see server power supplies, on board chargers & several other power supplies being built with GaN and reaping the benefits of smaller size, higher efficiency and lower material usage.
TimesTech: Sustainability and energy efficiency are central to your professional ethos. How do you see GaN contributing to eco-friendly innovation, particularly in areas like renewable energy and electromobility?
Vivek: Lower switching & conduction losses in GaN means higher efficiency, lesser heat generated means smaller or no heatsinks. GaN technologies enable higher switching frequencies, allowing for smaller & lighter passive components. All this means les loss in energy conversion & less material usage, which is directly related to sustainability.
TimesTech: Looking ahead, what innovations or partnerships can we expect from Infineon in the GaN space, and how will they shape the future of power electronics in India and beyond?
Vivek: As we have shown during the roadshow, we are willing to work very closely with our customers to support fast developments and leverage on the learnings and technical material available from Infineon. In addition, we will collaborate with our channel partners & invite Design & Engineering companies who can support product development with several other companies who wish to change their designs to GaN. We are also open to partnering with selected Universities and Professors to bring this information & knowledge to the engineers in making.
This three prong approach would help the customers with established & strong R&D, customers who needs more support & as well building the talent pipeline who is already well versed with the latest in technology.
