The Top 10 PowerViews articles for 2015 are listed below in chronological order. Companies represented in these articles include (in order) Murata Power Solutions, STMiroelectronics, Keithley Instruments, EPCOS AG, AVX, KEMET Electronics, Sarda Technologies, TESLAco, Elektrotechnisches Institut at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Ericsson Power Modules.
New Solutions and Challenges for Digital Control of Power Converters by Stephen Pimpis, Bill Smith, and Paul Knauber, Murata Power Solutions – Advancements in semiconductor technologies and system-level performance requirements, particularly in the telecom and datacom markets, have had a tremendous impact on the board level power infrastructure. Moore’s Law has been driving device densities, with the consequential effects of driving frequencies higher and voltages lower. With as many as 20 different voltage rails on a single board, as low as 0.5V and still falling, and with load currents exceeding 100A, power has become a major challenge for the system architect. With the lower voltage requirements for today’s electronics, one might also project a reduction in the power levels. more
1200V IGBTs "M series" in Trench Gate Field Stop for Rugged, Efficient and Reliable Industrial Power Drives by Giuseppe Gullotta, Technical Marketing Manager, STMicroelectronics – The third generation of IGBT trench-gate field-stop technology is at the heart of the M series 1200V IGBTs product family from STMicroelectronics. It has been specifically designed to minimize the environmental impacts of pollution saving more energy and increase reliability in applications such as industrial motor drives – representing the largest energy demanding – as well as solar inverters, uninterruptible power supplies, welding equipment, and more generally, in any hard-switching circuits operating at up to 20 kHz. more
A New Approach to Characterizing Power in Low Power Devices by David Wyban, Applications Engineer, Keithley Instruments – Minimizing the power consumption and extending battery life is a major focus for manufacturers of mobile electronics. That requires minimizing the current draw of all integrated circuits and electronic subassemblies. Characterizing these components starts with measuring their current consumption. Many of today’s devices have operating currents of micro-amps or less. more
Three Myths about Capacitors for Power Semiconductor Devices by Wolfgang Rambow Senior Director Sales Reference Designs, EPCOS AG, a TDK Group Company – Power electronics has evolved into a fast-developing field full of innovations that will have a great impact on our daily lives. One of the truly revolutionary developments in recent years is the TDK CeraLink™, a capacitor technology for the DC link or snubber based on piezo-ceramic material whose capacitance rises with increasing voltage and reaches its maximum value at its rated DC link voltage. Yet, despite the fact that power electronics is where the action is these days, a number of misconceptions about power semiconductor devices continue to persist, especially with regard to the problem of overshoot and the challenge of new, fast-switching semiconductors. more
The Importance of Passive Components in Today's Power Applications: Renewable Energy and Smart Grid Technology by John Gallipeau, Power Film Field Application Engineer, AVX – Continual developments in renewable energy technology have caused the cost of renewables to decrease significantly since the early 1990s, and the introduction and evolution of smart grid technologies has allowed renewables to legitimately contend with fossil fuels. The one major advantage that fossil fuels like coal, crude oil, and natural gas have over renewable energy sources is the potential energy they store, which allows fossil fuels to be stored without difficulty and used on demand. Alternately, since renewables like solar and wind power — the two fastest growing renewable energy sources — exhibit uncontrolled power output due to changing sunlight and wind conditions, they provide spontaneous power to the grid, which can cause load balance problems if they’re relied on like fossil fuel power. As such, engineers have developed new smart grid technology, advanced capacitors, and other energy storage methods designed to help balance the unstable power outputs from renewable energy and maintain their ability to contend with, and hopefully one day outpace, fossil fuels. more
Supercapacitors as Sidekicks by James C. Lewis, Technical Marketing Director, KEMET Electronics Corp. – Owners and operators of all types of vehicles – from small vehicles such as cars and light trucks to large diesel-engine commercial vehicles and locomotives - have an interest in technologies that can help save running costs and reduce environmental impact. Supercapacitors can be used to improve energy management in a number of vehicle electrical systems, such as starting and stop-start for conventional combustion engines, as well as energy storage and power boosting in hybrid and full-electric drivetrains. They can be used effectively alongside a lead-acid or lithium-ion battery, and could even replace a significant portion of lithium-ion battery capacity in hybrids and EVs of the future. more
Why More-Than-Moore Power Management Is Required to Keep Up With Exponential Growth in ICT Data Consumption by Bob Conner, CEO and Co-Founder, Sarda Technologies – Significant gains in energy efficiency are required to keep up with the exponential growth in the data consumption of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems: end-user devices, networks, and data centers. Moore’s Law scaling (monolithic integration in silicon) is the historical technology driver, but it no longer achieves the required gains. Fortunately, a new power management technology has emerged. It achieves More-than-Moore scaling by integrating different components and materials to increase functional diversity and parallelism.1,2,3 This technology can improve voltage regulator power density, response time and granularity by an order-of-magnitude to reduce the ICT system energy consumption by 30% or more. This paper explains why a Heterogeneously Integrated Power Stage (HIPS) enables power management scaling to keep up with the rising demands on data centers and network systems. more
Current Power Electronics Topics and Trends: Switching at 2MHz, Devices or Topologies, GaN vs MOSFETs by Slobodan Cuk, CEO and Founder, TESLAco – As I will discuss at Darnell's Energy Summit 2015: Even a novice to the field of Power Electronics will give you quick and straightforward answer: of course, to reduce dramatically the size, weight and cost of conversion equipment, which go down proportionally to how high is the switching frequency used. Hence, the theory goes all we need to do is to make new switching devices such as GaN devices capable of switching at 2MHz and even higher with following huge advantages: No need for soft switching as hard switching will do the job! Once at 10MHz, we can eliminate magnetic ferrite materials with their core saturation and core loss problems and reduce magnetics to just coil windings. This turns out not only to be a very naïve and simplistic argument but also dead wrong. more
Embedding Technology for Ultra-fast Switching Power Electronics by Gudrun Feix, Research Assistant, Technische Universität Berlin – Power semiconductors have undergone lots of advancements in the recent years, and new materials like SiC became ready for market. But also GaN devices come into play more and more, and even manufacturers of Si power chips squeeze out the possibilities of their devices, especially when it comes to switching speed, to be able to compete with SiC and GaN. Fast switching devices allow of course for high switching frequencies which, in turn, helps reducing passive devices like output chokes in active filters or solar inverters. more
From Scepticism to Necessity, Digital Power Adoption Accelerates for Next-gen Data Centers by Martin Hägerdal, President, Ericsson Power Modules – Digital regulation of power-supply rails for DC-DC converters is now the preferred technique in demanding applications due its efficiency, size, performance, and flexibility. Everything's going digital, so why not power supplies? If you had asked data center/server design teams about their views on digital power as recently as a decade ago, the responses would have ranged from "doesn't make sense, power is inherently analog" to "maybe, but…" or even "sounds like a good idea, but not yet," due to concerns about implementation, integrity, and cost. more
