Batteries
The world market for rechargeable lithium batteries is expected to grow very rapidly, reaching $9.1B by 2015 – a tenfold increase from 2008. Lithium batteries for automotive applications are expensive – the projected cost for an electric vehicle battery is of the order of $10,000. Ultra low loss GaN switches and diodes will enable new control circuits to be built that will extend the life of these expensive commercial and automotive lithium batteries by up to 60%. Only GaN technology is capable of realizing this improvement economically. From the number and size of devices required to address this market, it has been calculated that the total addressable market in this field will be around $5B by 2015.