Battery Management · Power Electronics
We brought GaN into the heart of our next BMS.
A battery management system is meant to protect, balance, and monitor. The quiet part nobody talks about is the power switch doing the heavy lifting inside it. That switch just changed.
In an energy storage system, the BMS has long played the role of guardian — watching, balancing, protecting. But as we push for higher energy density, tighter packaging, and better system efficiency, an overlooked component comes into focus: the power switch inside the BMS itself. The headline upgrade in LionCore's latest BMS is moving that switch from silicon to gallium nitride (GaN).
High-side continuous current - what changed
The old limit
Why high current used to mean a compromise
High-side control — switching on the positive rail rather than the ground return — is the topology engineers prefer. The load stays referenced to ground, fault conditions stay controllable, and the whole system behaves more predictably. The catch was physical.
When a high-side switch was built from a silicon MOSFET, a sudden short-circuit surge could push current faster than the gate driver could safely handle, putting it at risk of breakdown. To stay clear of that failure mode, silicon designs capped high-side continuous current at around 60A. Past that, the only safe option was to fall back to low-side control.
The choice was always the same one: keep the better topology, or get the current you actually needed. Rarely both.
The breakthrough
GaN takes the wall down
Gallium nitride fundamentally rewrites the performance curve of a power switch — milliohm-class on-resistance, very low gate charge, and switching speeds silicon can't approach. In practice that means the gate driver stays well within its limits even through large currents and short-circuit transients.
The result is the leap shown above. LionCore's first-generation GaN high-side design delivers 100A continuous, with architectural headroom to 300A. Current levels that once demanded a low-side fallback now run on the safer, cleaner high-side topology. It isn't a current upgrade or a topology upgrade — it's both at once, and the old either/or is gone.
What else GaN brings
Lower conduction loss
Milliohm-class on-resistance means far less self-heating at the same current, so the power path runs cooler and packs tighter.
Faster, cleaner switching
No body-diode reverse recovery like a silicon MOSFET, supporting higher efficiency and better electromagnetic compatibility.
Higher integration
A smaller package footprint turns directly into board density on space-constrained control boards.
Cooler operation
Less heat at the source eases thermal management across the whole enclosure and supports long-term reliability.
The takeaway
Putting GaN into a BMS pushes the latest progress in power electronics down to where the battery is actually managed. Its most direct value is letting the BMS use the safer high-side topology and carry currents silicon never could — from 100A, scaling toward 300A.
More current capability, lower loss, smaller footprint: all of it lands where users feel it most — stronger system performance, steadier and more reliable operation, and a longer service life. That's part of how LionCore thinks about better energy storage, and where we keep investing in the next generation of BMS.