By PAUL O'SHEA, Sr. Technical Editor
It was the year that saw the evolution of wide-bandgap technology and its uptake by design engineers into actual products. Yes, there are concerns that SiC is more expensive at the device level than Si but that’s not true at the system level when the frequency is increased from 10 kHz to 40 kHz, according to Infineon. Automotive appeared to be the primary target for most wideband gap devices, but certainly there were plenty of products that targeted photovoltaics, EV charging, traction control, and motor drives. The tone has changed from previous years at PCIM, from ‘we are designing devices that are almost ready,’ to this year’s mantra stating that ‘we have the devices and design kits to help you get product to market quickly. Other benefits that arise from using SiC and GaN include smaller and lighter end products, which, in the case of EVs would be a smaller and lighter batteries needed to operate the car.
The annual award winners for best paper and young engineer at PCIM 2017
The keynote address this year talked about the possible future envisioned by Renault with wireless charging of electric cars. One possibility is the integration of charging coils into the road surface enabling almost limitless use of EVs on these special roads. It probably won’t be the first use or the only method used to charge EVs but it certainly provided for some wonderment in the audience.
Some interesting products introduced at the PCIM show included one from Power Integrations , which was an expansion of its 1700 V SCALE-iDriver family of galvanically isolated single-channel gate driver ICs. It supports IGBT blocking voltages up to 1,700 V, which are typically used in 400 Vac and 690 Vac line applications. They are suitable for PV inverters and array designs that want to leverage the new 1,500 Vdc bus standard. The SCALE iDriver combines the company’s FluxLink magneto-inductive bi-directional comm technology and eliminates the need for optoelectronics and its compensation circuitry.
The Power Integrations 1700 V SCALE iDriver
During PCIM, ON Semiconductor demonstrated its most recent advances in power technology. Among the hardware demonstrated were the recently introduced FDMF8811. This highly integrated 100 V rated bridge power stage module addresses both half-bridge and full-bridge DC/DC converter topologies. It enables engineers to streamline their system designs, leading to elevated power delivery within the compact space available in DC/DC converters used in wireless base stations and other cloud computing infrastructure. Additionally, the FAN6248 synchronous rectifier controller will be on display. The company also demonstrated the new SPM2 and SPM3 Intelligent Power Module (IPM) families. These compact, integrated modules provide easy-to-implement solutions for inverter power stages in single and three-phase input voltage motor drives up to 5 kW. High power and thermal cycling characteristics support smaller and simplified energy saving drive designs that comply with prevailing standards such as the ErP Efficiency Regulations.
The demonstrations included power delivery in electric/hybrid-electric vehicles (EVs/HEVs) and fail safe control of brushless DC motors (with built-in diagnostic mechanisms). There also showed an industrial IoT design kit and a multifaceted home automation demonstration, which uses both wired Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) and wireless EnOcean technology, for lighting control purposes. See the Electronic Products Magazine industrial IoT interview with ON Semiconductor at the PCIM show
Littelfuse announces a series of fifteen-minute “TechTalks LIVE!” where they addressed a variety of issues related to power semiconductors, particularly the challenges associated with integrating silicon carbide (SiC) devices like Schottky diodes and MOSFETs into power converter designs. The talks included how to accelerate your power converter design using SiC and focused on gate driver and converter layout considerations.
Another talk was ‘Knowing when to switch to SiC’ because it may not always be clear when you should jump to SiC and when you should stay with silicon. The talk offered insights to help circuit designer determine if and when they should change from Si to SiC.
Higher efficiency, increased power density, smaller footprints and reduced system costs are the main advantages of transistors based on SiC. Infineon Technologies is starting volume production for the EASY 1B, the first full-SiC module announced at last year’s PCIM. On the occasion of this year’s PCIM, the company showed off additional module platforms and topologies for the 1,200 V CoolSiC MOSFET family. The new 1,200 V SiC MOSFETs have been optimized to combine high reliability with performance. They show dynamic losses which are an order of magnitude lower than 1,200 V Si IGBTs. First products will initially support upcoming system challenges in applications such as photovoltaic inverters, uninterruptible power supplies and charging/storage systems. The new configurations will also enable revolutionary new solutions in industrial drives, medical technology or auxiliary power supplies in the railway sector in the near future. See Electronic Product Magazine’s interview with Infineon at the PCIM show .
Architects of Modern Power (AMP) Group talked with Electronic Products Magazine during PCIM 2017 in Nuremberg Germany. The Group offers something new to the power designer; it takes a segment of the PMBus and defines it further within the AMP group. It gives users the ability to second sources products so that they have plug and play capability. Editor Alix Paultre questioned the members of the AMP group about CUI’s Jeff Schnabel, Murata’s Charlie Swiontek, and Martin Hägerdal from Ericsson Power Modules.
Wolfspeed , a long-time leader in the SiC space continues innovate with quality devices, this time with industry’s first power module that passes the harsh environment qualification test. This is no meaningless advancement because it requires passing qualification test for simultaneous high-humidity, high-temperature, and high-voltage conditions. It allows system designers to use the device for transportation, wind, solar, and other renewables, where extreme conditions have historically made it very difficult to obtain safe device operation. The SiC module is rated for 300 A and 1.2 kV blocking and stressed at 85% humidity at 85°C, while biased at 80% of the rated voltage. See the Electronic Products Magazine interview of Wolfspeed at the PCIM show.
The Wolfspeed 300 A half-bridge that offers 1,200 V blocking while highly stressed
X-FAB and Exagan made some noise in the gallium nitride arena by demonstrating mass-production capability to manufacture high-voltage power devices on 200-mm GaN-on-Si wafers, using X-FAB’s standard CMOS production facility in Dresden, Germany. This accomplishment is the result of a joint development agreement launched in 2015, enabling cost/performance advantages that could not be achieved with smaller wafers.The companies have resolved many of the challenges related to material stress, defectivity and process integration while using standard fabrication equipment and process recipes. Combined with the use of 200-mm wafers, this will significantly lower the cost of mass producing GaN-on-silicon devices. By enabling greater power integration than silicon ICs, GaN devices can improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of electrical converters, which will accelerate their adoption in applications including electrical vehicle charging stations, servers, automobiles and industrial systems.
GaN Systems had a plethora of products on display that solve design challenges in a wide variety of applications including DC/DC converters, energy storage systems, EV traction inverters, power modules, PWM motor controllers, LED drivers. They had several demonstrations including a crowd favorite that showed an airborne drone flying with power generated only by a 150 W wireless transmitter , operating at 13.56 MHz. Electronic Products Magazine interviewed GaN Systems’ CEO Jim Witham and gave us a tour of the company’s products and how wide-spread the adoption of GaN technology is and how it can be implemented by design engineers.
The biggest power design challenges identified by engineers are downstream changes to the specifications after the design process has begun. According to research conducted by Vicor , 87% of power system designers around the world identified specification changes as the most frequent impediment in designing power systems.
The research also highlights the challenges of meeting project timelines. It says that 80% of power engineers are already struggling to meet time constraints when designing power systems and 79% feel that project schedules are tighter due to time-to-market pressures. Spec changes negatively impact schedules according to 65% of engineers.
Vicor says its research identifies the biggest problems of designing power systems in an increasingly demanding business environment. The first in a series of whitepapers, “Why Can’t My Boss Make His Mind Up?” , analyzes the impact of spec changes in more detail and offers some methods of coping with them. While specifications changes may be inevitable, there are ways to minimize their negative consequences. Download the white paper The impact of changes in specification on power system designers .
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