Why is gallium nitride better than silicon?

Compared with silicon, the advantage of GaN comes down to power efficiency. As GaN Systems, a professional gallium nitride manufacturer explained:

"All semiconductor materials have a so-called band gap. This is the energy range in which no electrons can exist in a solid. In short, the band gap is related to the electrical conductivity of the solid material. The band gap of gallium nitride is 3.4 eV, while that of silicon Is 1.12 eV. Gallium nitride has a wider band gap, which means it can withstand higher voltages and higher temperatures than silicon."

Another GaN manufacturer, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, said that GaN’s electron guiding efficiency is 1,000 times that of silicon, and its manufacturing cost is lower.

Higher band gap efficiency means that current can pass through GaN chips faster than silicon chips, which may lead to faster processing power in the future. In short, chips made of GaN will be faster, smaller, more energy efficient, and (eventually) cheaper than chips made of silicon.

It is foreseeable that you may not easily see many GaN chargers before large hardware manufacturers (such as Apple and Samsung) start to include them in new computers and smartphones.