PCIM’s First-Ever Digital Format Showcased the Power Industry’s Newest Products
More than 300 conference and forum presentations made up this year's digital PCIM Europe conference.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic slowing down the world economy substantially in the last few months, many power companies kept strong on developing new products to showcase at the PCIM Europe held July 7 through July 8.
The PCIM Europe digital format. Image courtesy of PCIM Europe.
This year's PCIM event saw the exhibition going online for the first time in its history. Although COVID-19 concerns squashed the planned in-person format, the all-digital PCIM recorded 4,506 participants using the platform last week.
The “PCIM Europe digital days 2020” included more than 300 conference and forum presentations from a total of 74 companies, including Siemens, Infineon, Rohm Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric, Varta, and Wolfspeed.
Below is a roundup of some of the most interesting products this year’s company participants had to offer.
ON Semiconductor
Testing products physically is the hardest part of showcasing them in a virtual environment, and ON Semiconductor planned its PCIM presence accordingly.
The company’s Demo Room is an online tool that includes various demonstrations of how products look and work, including individual videos, technical sheets, and for some products, individual presentations.
Image courtesy of ON Semiconductor.
Demo Room is divided into two categories, respectively “Automotive” and “Industrial Power and Motion”.
Products included in the form include electric vehicle onboard chargers and VE-Trac dual power modules.
The Industrial Power and Motion page, on the other hand, showcases a variety of components, ranging from SiC modules to bridge motor drives and more.
You can check out the ON Semiconductor Demo Room here.
GaN Systems
GaN Systems' contribution to the PCIM event focused on the automotive, industrial, and consumer markets.
The industrial automation giant organized a series of four seminars over the conference’s two days in which various executives presented new products as well as GaN Systems plans for the future.
Image courtesy of GaN Systems.
The first webinar was held on Tuesday 7th by Technical Marketing Director Jimmy Liu. It illustrated a High-Frequency Investigation of Wide Bandgap-Based PFC and LLC Converters in PSU.
This was followed by a panel discussion on the Past - Present – Future of Power GaN, the company’s subsidiary focusing on power electronics systems.
The second day of PCIM saw GaN Systems’ CEO Jim Witham discuss Wide Band Gap power semiconductors and how they are changing the power electronics industry.
This was followed by a webinar by GaN Systems’ Senior Application Engineer Dr. Ruoyu Hou about the company’s new power transistors.
HY-LINE and Tranphorm
German electronics manufacturer HY-LINE and US-based company Tranphorm joined forces this year to deliver a truly immersive presentation platform for PCIM.
The interactive, web-based experience is accessible at this link and allows users to wander from one virtual room to the other to see all the latest products released by the two manufacturers.
Image courtesy of HY-LINE.
During the event, HY-LINE experts could be contacted directly to answer any questions participants might have.
In terms of the specific products showcased on the platform, they range from AC / DC and DC / DC power supply to supercapacitor modules, from IGBT, IPM, MOSFET, and rectifier modules to bidirectional data couplers with VDE certification, and much more.
Much like the other participants, HY-LINE and Tranphorm also organized various live presentations with following live discussion groups.
ROHM Semiconductor
The Japanese electronics manufacturer divided its PCIM contribution into three separate efforts.
Image courtesy of ROHM.
The first one focused on webinars, which are still available on the company’s website. The two most relevant ones for engineers were the following:
What role have automotive-qualified IGBTs from ROHM in electric vehicle air-conditioning systems? This was presented by Felipe Filsecker, Application Engineer for Power Devices at ROHM Semiconductor.
Discussion on various gate driver considerations in driving SiC power devices and measurement techniques. This was presented by Vikneswaran Thayumanasamy, Application Engineer for Gate Drivers at ROHM Semiconductor.
Secondly, ROHM highlighted a variety of new products on the occasion of the PCIM event. These included SiC, GaN, Isolated Gate Driver ICs for power MOSFETs, and high-speed switching Super Junction MOSFETs, among others.
Finally, the company took the opportunity of showcasing its Solution Simulator at PCIM, a web-based circuit simulation tool that allows engineers to operate components and individual devices as well as whole systems.
Wolfspeed
The firm has revealed the new family of 650 V Series of Silicon Carbide solutions at the event, as well as announced it is going to invest $720M in the next five years to expand silicon carbide capacity.
Image courtesy of Wolfspeed.
Wolfspeed has gone all-in for the PCIM Europe Digital Days 2020.
The firm has revealed the new family of 650 V Series of Silicon Carbide solutions at the event, as well as announced it is going to invest $720M in the next five years to expand silicon carbide capacity.
Wolfspeed held a total of six talks during the two-day event, covering technical topics such as Thermal Solutions for Surface Mount Power Devices and applications of SiC MOSFETs in 6.6kW High-Frequency High-Power-Density Power Converter.
The firm also produced additional webinars that are now available on their website.
Finally, Wolfspeed has demonstrated new products at the PCIM event, which you can find down below:
600 kW Three Phase Dual Inverter
6.6 kW High Power Density Bi-Directional EV On-Board Charger
22 kW High-Efficiency Bi-Directional DCDC Converter for EV-On-Board Charger
180 kW SiC MOSFET-Based Traction Motor Inverter Platform
All of these have a one-pager data sheet on the site as well as a more detailed presentation file.
Murata
Murata’s efforts during this year’s PCIM focused on the latest components and technologies for Power Management that can enable manufacturers to build their “next innovation”.
For the Japanese firm, these would be components in two particular categories of electronics: power and would magnetics.
Image courtesy of Murata.
Regarding the first category, Murata released new DC-DC converters, including the MGJ and NXJ series for Gate-Drive applications, E-Mobility inverter applications, and more, as well as AC DC modules.
In terms of Wound Magnetics, the Kyoto-based firm unveiled a new High Power, High-Frequency Transformer for challenging applications like eV/HeV fast charging, railway, renewable energy, smart grid energy distribution, and medical applications.
As for Murata’s webinars during PCIM, there were two of them, and they focused respectively on High power and low power AC-DC and DC-DC & high power magnetics and innovative transformer solutions.
Semikron
Semikron's PCIM presentations included an e-mobility and an industry forum, and two round tables, focusing on optimizing power electronics and renewable energy applications.
Semikron also presented the results on power cycling tests on thyristor modules at the PCIM conference in a talk by Maximilian Goller from the Technical University of Chemnitz, Deutschland.
Image courtesy of Semikron.
Additional contributions from Semikron discuss the results of a paper named “Potential and Challenges of Additive Manufactured Substrates and Auxiliary Material for Electronics”, which is currently nominated for the Best Paper Award.
Finally, the German manufacturer held a talk to showcase their new 110 kW, 2.6 l SiC-Inverter for DRIVEMODE, a Highly Integrated Automotive Drivetrain.
All of last week’s PCIM presentations will be available for participants to view until July 31.
Next year’s PCIM Europe conference is scheduled to be held in Nuremberg, Germany, from May 4 to May 6.
What are you finding most interesting or most difficult about the new online format of many industry conferences this year? Let us know in the comments below.
