General Semiconductor: Rectifiers

General Semiconductor, Inc. has introduced a new series of ultrafast rectifiers that have reportedly been optimized to reduce switching losses for use in power factor correction (PFC) circuits for switching power supplies. According to the company, its proprietary gold diffusion process results in softer recovery waveforms and improved high-temperature switching performance when compared to other PFC rectifiers that use platinum diffusion. The softer recovery waveform reduces EMI noise in high frequency applications. Gold doping also minimizes the temperature sensitivity of the reverse recovery time (trr), resulting in improved switching performance at elevated operating temperatures. These devices have very fast reverse recovery times as low as 25ns. The low forward voltage drop (VF) minimizes forward conduction losses. Together these features improve the efficiency of the PFC circuit.