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 clops 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 bandgap is is an
energy range where no electrons can exist gallium nitride's band gap is
nearly triple that of silicons 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 a thousand times more efficiently
than silicon charges 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 like blocks the other
outlets or 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 nitrate 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 and i
was alive back then 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 charges 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 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
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