Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Are BULKY Chargers Going Away? – Gallium Nitride (GaN)”.
Chances are you don’t think a whole lot about the charger you use to power up your phone, your laptop or electric toothbrush., You plug it in it, clobbers your gadget with electronics and a little while later you got a full charge., Simple right. Well, it turns out that the electronics industry is very interested in making a fundamental change to charging technology. To be specific they’re. Looking at moving away from conventional silicon and switching to a new material called gallium nitride.. But why would they stop using something so tried and true To answer we reached out to our friends at Anker and we’d like to thank them for their insight., So, like other electronics chargers contain semiconductors like silicon, that control current flow. And a semiconductor is a material That allows some electricity to flow, but not tons of it.
Hence the name., However, not all semiconductors are the same and one of the main ways that they differ from each other is in something called a band. Gap. All a band gap is, is an energy range where no electrons can exist.
Gallium nitride’s band gap is nearly triple that of silicon’s, meaning it can conduct electrons at higher voltages, but the band gap isn’t so high that it turns it into an insulator which can’t Conduct electrons very well at all., Because gallium nitride chargers can use high voltages. They can conduct electrons about 1,000 times more efficiently than silicon chargers. Can.. This efficiency gives them a few distinct advantages that are relevant to you and me buddy, boy. One. You can make a charger quite a bit smaller., So instead of having a phone charger that blocks the other outlets or a laptop brick that weighs down your backpack you’ll, have an efficient, gallium, nitride charger that can push a high number of watts. Two.
You might see chargers that are a little more versatile as the more efficient nature of gallium nitride means that it’ll be easier to make chargers that can charge multiple devices at once or incorporate additional features, such as multiple plugs for different countries. Without taking up a ton of space. Three, they should eventually be cheaper.. Currently, the few gallium nitride chargers that exist on the market are more expensive than their silicon counterparts. Since silicon is so widely available.
Plus they’re, subject to the dreaded early adopter tax like most new electronics., However, because gallium nitride is so much more efficient. Manufacturers won’t need as much of it, to construct a charger which will drive costs down to the point that they might be less expensive on average than today’s silicon chargers., And it’s not like gallium nitride is a completely unknown material that we can’t manufacture in large quantities.. Indeed, it actually started being used in a large scale in LED lights way back in the 1990s., I was alive back, then., (, audience, sighs ). You also won’t need a device, that’s specifically compatible with a gallium nitride charger to take advantage of these benefits.
Thank God., And if you’re, a fan of fast charging, gallium nitride will be especially important as its higher efficiency will allow fast charging to be deployed to more Devices., Of course it might be a while before we see gallium nitride chargers become just as common as silicon-based ones, but you can grab one today if you’re willing to spend a little more money.. Some current chargers can push as much as 100, watts. Ha current chargers.. So they might be worth it if you often need high capacity charging but find yourself fighting space limits like if you’re that guy hogging every outlet inside the airport terminal..
Didn’T your parents teach you how to share Big thanks to our sponsor Private Internet Access.. It won’t protect your credit cards or passwords or identity, but it is a tool that masks your IP and encrypts traffic on your devices and you can combine it with private browsing tools to even make savvy websites think you’re somewhere. Else.. Pia is a reliable service with over 3,000 servers in 45 countries and no bandwidth caps.. It has configurable encryption and an internet kill switch that prevents data from leaking. Should you be involuntarily disconnected.? It also has the MACE feature which blocks requests to known malware and tracking domains. Altogether. So try it risk-free with their seven-day money back guarantee..
They have clients for Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and Linux – that you can connect up to 10 devices at once, to. So check it out at privateinternetaccess.com/techquickie.. So thanks for watching guys., If you liked this video hit Like get subscribed and be sure to hit us up in the Comments section with your suggestions for topics that we should cover in the future. .