Principal Application Engineer

The next challenge in power electronics. 5 October 2026 At Pretzl Connect 2026, Nexperia argued that GaN versus SiC versus silicon is the wrong question - and that engineers designing for AI data centres, robotics, and electrification need to judge power devices by how they behave in the application, not on paper. For much of the past decade, the case for wide-bandgap (WBG) semiconductors has been made on switching performance. Gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) switch faster and waste less energy than silicon, and that efficiency story drove early adoption. According to Nexperia, that chapter is now largely written. "Historically, the perception was that you should focus on the technology that allows you to achieve the best efficiency," said Filippo Scrimizzi, Regional System Application Director at Nexperia. "The world is changing. It is not just performance, it's a mindset - understanding how the market is evolving." Rebuilding capacity. Before turning to WBG, Olaf Vogt, Director and Head of Product, Application Marketing and Engineering, addressed the company's position. Nexperia lost control of its assembly and test sites in Guangdong and Wuxi in October 2025 and has spent the year since rebuilding supply. "This is not an easy time for us, but we have a clear recovery plan, which is already in the implementation phase," said Vogt. Capacity is being significantly expanded at its sites in Malaysia and the Philippines, alongside new foundry and OSAT partnerships. Why the focus is shifting. Scrimizzi pointed to three converging markets: automotive electrification, the energy transition, and AI infrastructure. In data centres, rack power is climbing beyond 250kW, distribution voltages are rising and architectures are moving from single-phase to three-phase. Switching performance gains are well understood; the next gains, Nexperia believes, will come from thermal performance, power density, packaging, system optimisation, and reliability. WBG devices also enable new topologies. In a next-generation bidirectional on-board charger, a bidirectional switch allows the AC/DC and DC/DC stages to merge, removing the DC link capacitor and reducing bill of materials, at the cost of greater control complexity. With cars parked for more than eight hours a day, Scrimizzi said, vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-load turn the car into an energy store. The data sheet trap. The session's central argument was that headline specifications mislead. Nexperia compared its 650V Cascode GaN (Gen 1) with a competitor's e-mode GaN device. On paper, the competitor looked equal or better on every parameter: 25 versus 33mΩ RDS(on), 134nC versus 173nC Qoss, and lower thermal resistance. Yet in a 400-to-230V non-isolated buck converter running at 200kHz, the Cascode device achieved higher efficiency at higher power levels. Scrimizzi was careful not to dismiss e-mode: where switching losses dominate, it performs better. But where conduction and soft-switching behaviour matter more, the result reverses. "Before deciding on the final design, don't just trust the number you read in the datasheet," he said. "Test on the bench according to the final application requirements." SiC showed the same pattern. Nexperia's SiC MOSFETs and a competitor's were equivalent at room temperature, but between 25 and 175°C, Nexperia's conduction losses grew by around 1.6 times at 40A, compared with around 2.3 times for the competitor. Matching technology to the application. For AI data centres, Nexperia is lining up 750 and 1200V SiC MOSFETs from 17 to 80mΩ for power supplies, SiC JFETs for hot-swap and solid-state circuit breakers, and very-high-voltage devices above 3.3kV for solid-state transformers. Top-side cooled packages are key to fitting more power into a fixed rack form factor. Humanoid robots are an emerging opportunity for GaN. Each robot uses 25 to 35 body actuators, drawing 0.5 to 2kW per joint, with potentially 200 to 300 GaN switches per robot, according to Yole Group. Most run on 48V batteries, which Nexperia is targeting with its Gen 2 GaN in the 80 to 100V range. Higher switching frequencies mean smaller passives, smoother motor control, and compact drives inside the joint, while silicon still serves low-power joints. Optimisation, not adoption. Nexperia is positioning its integrated device manufacturer model as the way to industrialise WBG at scale. In 2026 its GaN portfolio is set to almost double, with around 60 SiC diodes and MOSFETs releasing, including a 750V SiC MOSFET family in industrial and automotive-qualified versions. Scrimizzi also argued that the package is now as important as the die. "Even the device can be considered a system," he said, pointing to top-side cooled and leadless packages as enablers of thermal performance. His closing message was simple. "We do not believe there is a single technology that will be the winner in the market." The next phase, in other words, is about application optimisation - and bench results, not datasheet tables. Keep up to date with the most important news. ERZIA upgrades environmental ratings of New Space amplifier line. Leicester launches AI student helper. 5 October 2026

Tata-Nexperia India chip route is not supply yet. September 19, 2026 by jimmy India's semiconductor buildout just gained a named customer and a two-site production sketch. That is not the same thing as extra MOSFETs on a distributor shelf. On September 17, Tata Electronics and Nexperia announced a strategic partnership to prepare Nexperia MOSFET production at Tata's upcoming 300 mm fab in Dholera, Gujarat, and to assemble and test Nexperia discrete products at Tata's packaging plant in Jagiroad, Assam. Electronics Weekly reported the deal on September 18. A separate September 18 memorandum with Sumitomo Chemical adds an upstream materials signal around the same Dholera project. The market question is narrower than "will India have another fab?" It is whether an identifiable product portfolio can actually travel a complete, commercially useful route - wafer in, packaged device out - under Nexperia's name. What the Tata-Nexperia partnership actually covers. The joint announcement hosted by Nexperia frames a long-term manufacturing, technology, and ecosystem relationship. MOSFET wafers are the disclosed front-end target at Dholera. Discrete assembly and test are the disclosed back-end target at Jagiroad. What the release does not give is equally important. There is no equity split, no product-level shipment schedule, and no purchase volume. Electronics Weekly's headline uses "jv." The primary text supports calling this a strategic partnership. It does not support asserting that a separately owned joint-venture company has already been formed. The same release puts Tata's combined investment in the two facilities at $14 billion. That is a stated facility investment. It is not the price of the Nexperia agreement, a new payment by Nexperia, or the value of its orders. Treat those dollars as project scale, not as a demand forecast. Why a supplier relationship is not a capacity print. A planned fab is potential capacity. A named manufacturing customer is different evidence: someone intends to use part of that capacity. Linking the two makes the Dholera-Jagiroad story more commercially specific than a generic "addressable market" slide. It still does not justify an immediate utilization number. The disclosed MOSFET scope does not name devices, transfer sequence, wafer allocation, or the customer approvals that would have to travel with a production move. Do not assign Tata's total fab output to Nexperia unless an allocation is disclosed. Do not treat the entire Nexperia discrete catalog as transferable to India on the strength of this announcement. For market analysis, the agreement is a customer-development milestone. It is stronger than a vague statement of demand. It is weaker than a qualified product release and a shipping schedule. Why wafer fab and packaging have to be read together. Diversifying only the front end can leave assembly and test sitting on the same concentrated backend. Diversifying only packaging can leave incoming wafers on the same concentrated fab. A relationship that sketches both stages is commercially more interesting because it creates the option of a more complete additional route. That is an inference about potential, not proof that the route is independent today. Buyers would still need to know where materials originate, which process steps stay shared with existing supply, how test programs are maintained, and how finished devices reach customers. A new geography also does not create a second vendor. Customers may gain another production location inside one supplier's network while keeping the same commercial counterparty and the same product ownership. Location risk can fall without supplier-level exposure disappearing. What the Sumitomo Chemical materials MoU does - and does not - prove. On September 18, Tata Electronics and Sumitomo Chemical signed an MoU to explore supplying semiconductor materials to Dholera and manufacturing some of them in India. The stated scope includes photoresists, functional chemicals, and high-purity process chemicals. Tata describes Dholera as a planned $11 billion, 300 mm fab and cites technology access spanning 28 nm to 110 nm through its PSMC alliance. Those are project-wide statements. They should not be assigned to Nexperia's MOSFET flow unless that mapping is disclosed. The materials MoU matters because an intended device customer and an intended input supplier sit on opposite sides of fab readiness. Neither replaces the other. A MOSFET program needs a repeatable process; that process needs qualified, consistently delivered chemicals. An exploratory memorandum is not an operating local chemical plant, and it is not completed materials qualification. What disclosure would turn this into a sourcing option. Three classes of follow-up would make the supply outlook concrete: * Product scope: named device families, intended applications, and the sequence in which they enter the new route. * Operational evidence: completed process transfer, sample availability, qualification milestones, and confirmed production release. * Commercial evidence: allocated capacity, order commitments, shipment timing, and the share of supply expected to come from the new sites. Those are monitoring items, not conditions the companies have already said they met. Until they appear, the partnership does not establish shorter distributor lead times, lower MOSFET prices, or the end of any existing allocation constraint. Procurement teams can still prepare. Ask for product-specific manufacturing-location data and change-notification plans. There is no basis in the announcement for treating the whole Nexperia portfolio as immediately transferable, interchangeable, or newly available from India. The takeaway. Tata-Nexperia gives India's manufacturing buildout an identifiable prospective product route across both wafer fabrication and packaging. The Sumitomo Chemical materials activity makes the ecosystem story more tangible. The announcements remain different from qualified output. The next useful market signal is a named product moving through that route with a confirmed release and delivery schedule. That is the point at which geographic diversification becomes a sourcing option rather than a strategic intention.