SPES Electronic Limited (contract service)
Nexperia Hong Kong Limited
Power management integrated circuit (PMIC) provides efficient control and management of electricity to various of power electronics applications. According to the research from the MarketWatch in Apr 2021, the global PMIC market reached US$42.8 billion in 2019, and it is projected to exceed US$63.1 billion by 2025. However, nearly 99% high-end PMIC solutions are from foreign companies, such as TI, ADI, Infineon, and there is a strong localization desire from HK & domestic companies to avoid the side effect due to the unstable global supply chain. This project aims to develop a powerful high-end PMIC with a series of key enabling platform technologies to dramatically improve its output current capabilities and efficiency in high frequency operations, which is more suitable for the application of 3rd generation power semiconductors, such as GaN devices, and the proposed key platform technologies include: 1) to further explore the building-block design concept and develop a powerful multi-phase PMIC (MPM-IC) with a multi-phase interleaved control (MIC) up to 12 phases; 2) to develop a novel driver in the MPM-IC with dynamic dead-time control (DDC) and high-speed level-shifting architecture (HLA) to improve the power efficiency in ~MHz operation; and 3) to develop a point-of-load converter module based on “components-on-package” (COP-POL) 3D integration technology to dramatically improve the output current capability up to the order of a hundred amperes. The developed MPM-IC will be an ideal solution for the point-of-load converter products widely used to support the distributed and/or super large output current application scenarios in the high-density smart city applications, such as AI computing, data center, 5G base station. It is believed that the proposed ideas are not only provide a technology platform but also a tangible high end power conversion solution beneficial to the whole power electronics industry in Hong Kong, China and worldwide.