GaN converters charge simultaneously

Mobile devices have gotten slimmer over the years but chargers have remained in the same clunky form factors. Zolt, a subsidiary of gallium nitride (GaN) fab Avogy, has developed a lipstick tube-sized charger capable of powering three devices simultaneously at up to 70W.

Zolt's power converters allow users to charge batteries of different sizes at the same time without overheating or experiencing large switching losses. The Zolt Laptop Charger Plus can maintain a skin temperature of 63 degrees and is efficient enough to dissipate power and save 5 to 8 degrees in the adapter.

The device can power any laptop and two USB-based devices with range of 110 to 240V. An onboard microcontroller runs firmware to identify devices and route a specified amount of current through each of the devices' ports, said Poonacha Kongetira, Avogy vice president of systems engineering.

To negate switching losses that typically occur in switch board power supplies, the Zolt Laptop Charger Plus switches the FET when voltage across the device is zero. A wide bandgap semiconductor such as GaN is an excellent fit for heavily modulated power cycling, Kongetira said, noting that you could feed 1,200V into the semiconductor without degrading reliability.

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