How Apple is lifting the chip material gallium nitride into the mass market

Illustration of semiconductors made from gallium nitride

Apple is not the first electronics company to use the semiconductor material instead of silicon in chargers.

(Photo: Klawe Rzeczy, Getty, Imago [M])

Munich It wasn’t even a side note to the general public, but experts pricked up their ears when Apple recently unveiled its latest notebooks. For the first time, the world’s most valuable IT company is using gallium nitride (GaN) chips in the power supply units of the MacBook Pro.

Apple is not the first large electronics company to use the modern semiconductor material instead of the usual silicon in chargers. But as is so often the case, the Californians could pave the way for an innovative application into the mass market.

The benefits for consumers are obvious. “With GaN chips, cell phones, tablets or notebooks can be charged much faster,” says Andreas Urschitz, head of the Power & Sensor Systems division at Infineon. The Dax group is the world’s largest manufacturer of so-called power semiconductors for power supply.

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