Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) has won the Product of the Year 2021 – Power Semiconductor/Driver IC of the prestigious World Electronics Achievement Awards (WEAA) for EPC21601 eToF Laser Driver IC.

The WEAA scheme honors products that have made outstanding contributions to the innovation and development of the electronics industry worldwide. A committee comprising of Aspencore's global senior industry analysts and online users worldwide selects the winners.

Commenting on the award win, the CEO and Co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion, Dr Alex Lidow says “On behalf of EPC team, I would like to thank Aspencore team and all voters for this prestigious World Electronics Achievement Award for our EPC21601 eToF laser driver IC. Recent advances in our GaN IC technology are poised to change the way time-of-flight lidar systems are designed. Integrating an eGaN FET plus driver on one chip generates an extremely powerful, blazing fast IC and reduces size and cost for ToF lidar systems with wider adoption in consumer applications.”

EPC21601 eToF Laser Driver IC integrates a 40 V, 10 A FET with integrated gate driver and 3.3 V logic level input in a single chip for time-of-flight lidar systems used in robotics, surveillance systems, drones, autonomous cars, and vacuum cleaners.

The EPC21601 is capable of very high frequencies exceeding 100 MHz and super short pulses <2 ns to modulate laser driving currents up to 10 A. Turn-on and turn-off times are 410 ps and 320 ps respectively.

The EPC21601 is a single-chip driver plus eGaN FET using EPC’s proprietary GaN IC technology in a chip-scale BGA form factor that measures only 1.5 x 1.0 mm. With this small form factor and the integration of several functions, the overall solution that is 36 % smaller on the printed circuit board (PCB) compared to an equivalent multi-chip discrete implementation.

Click here to learn more about the EPC21601 IC listed on everything PE.

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