Back to Basics with Power Semiconductors

­Welcome to the November edition of Power Systems Design Europe. The subject of this month’s Special Report is Power Semiconductors. The subject covers a huge range of components and is dedicated to their advancement. It is something we are not short of at present, especially with the speed of improvement in wide bandgap technologies and the circuits in which they operate. To their credit, engineers working with silicon are also breaking boundaries just as quickly. I seriously don’t think the area of power electronics has ever seen so much innovation on so many different levels in such a relatively short period of time.

The first article in the Special Report was contributed by onsemi. SiC devices are changing the way we design for high-power applications, and since their introduction they have seen high levels of adoption. However, we are yet to see the best of its capabilities. Designing with SiC is not as simple as designing with silicon, and to get the best out of SiC transistors requires that the driver and the MOSFET be closely matched. In the article, Bob Card writes about what how the specific characteristics of SiC and careful selection of both the MOSFET and its driver can bring the best possible results.

The speed of technological innovation I mentioned earlier is happening so quickly that it can sometimes be hard to take a step back and actually see the improvements that are actually being achieved. The second article in this month’s Special Report comes from Analog Devices, and it does exactly that. The authors of the article look at the company’s recently introduced LTM4712high current, four-switch buck-boost regulator and compare it to its predecessors in terms of performance and power handling.

As well as the articles in the Special Report, this issue will include general features that are of interest to power engineers in our Tech Focus section. Here, we have two really interesting articles. The first comes from Mouser and it looks at cybersecurity, which may not be the first issue that comes to mind when you think of power electronics. However, as the world becomes more connected and power design moves further into the digital domain, new power designs are often connected to the internet, for both control and update purposes, and this could leave them vulnerable to attacks. In the article, Mouser’s Mark Patrick speaks about the standards and legislation that is relevant to enabling more secure designs.

The second Tech Focus article this month was written by Alexander Kamenka from Schaffner. The article explains why EMC, EMI and power quality should be looked at together at the beginning of the design process to save damage to the end product in the future and how looking at the separate issues as a single problem can provide a quicker and better overall solution.

This month’s magazine will also include the latest news and views from around the power industry. I hope you enjoy.

Best Regards

Ally Winning

European Editor, PSD