More efficiency for the power electronics

Under leadership of the Ferdinand brown institute now the European Union project HiPoSwitch started. It aims at energy-more efficient, more compact and more efficient electronic energy converters for various applications, approximately in the information and communication technology or during the transformation of solar energy. The project partners take the complete added value chain off, from the element development to the industrialists utilization-low energy consumption and high achievements are the central requirements to modern achievement converter systems. They are to preserve resources and to process at the same time ever higher data sets. Power transistors are the elementary elements of electronic achievement converters, which transform equal and alternating current on different tensions. They are to be found in almost each technical equipment; within the range of the information and communication technologies they play a central role for instance in portable radio basis stations. Further ranges of application are equal/alternating current alike for computers, networks and memory as well as solar transducers, electrical and Hybridfahrzeuge.Das of the Ferdinand brown institute coordinated European Union project HiPoSwitch are occupied in the coming three years with new gallium-nitride-based transistors. They are to ensure with future achievement converter systems for fewer volumes and weight with at the same time higher efficiency. The efficiency of present systems is usually limited by the used active logic elements. Nowadays components on the basis of silicon or silicon carbide are usually used. The silicon technology progressed meanwhile however so far the fact that the material pushes to its borders or, as in the case of silicon carbide, is very expensive. Gallium nitride (GaN) promises better material properties. With GaN are based elements can be operated circuit-breakers with clearly higher frequencies, without having to accept significant switching losses. Reason is the clearly smaller on-resistance of GaN power transistors, which leads together with the significantly reduced in and output capacitances to a clearly improved switching attitude. With higher switching frequency the size of the passive components leaves itself such as coils, current transformers and condensers at the same time clearly reduces � the building group becomes altogether smaller. The transistors are composed on economical silicon substrates and are from there of economic view very interesting, there them at longer term clearly better technical characteristics with comparatively favorable costs verbinden.5, 6 million euros flow into the compound project with eight European partners; the European Union promotion portion is with 3.6 million euro. The authority that� Project partners cover thereby the entire added value chain of research and development (Ferdinand brown institute, Leibniz institute for very high frequency technology (FBH); Slovak Academy of Sciences; Technical University of Vienna; University of Padua) up to the industrial utilization (AIXTRON SE, Artesyn Austria GmbH & CO. Kg, EpiGaN, Infineon Technologies Austria AG) off. With project conclusion GaN power transistors and 200 mm will be industrially available GaN up silicon substrates and world-wide be marketed.� Interlaces closely: Element development and industrial TransferDas citizen of Berlin Ferdinand brown institute and Infineon Technologies Austria develop closing GaN power transistors in vertical architecture in the project together. The structure of the transistors predominantly takes place on GaN up SI Wafern of the company EpiGaN; for Benchmarking structures on GaN up SiC Wafern from the FBH are parallel tested. The process modules from the FBH are to be transferred thereby as rapidly as possible on a mass-suited industrial process with Infineon. Also explorative concepts toward newer self-locking that GaN power transistors, which can work for instance at high temperatures to 250�C, are examined. Predominantly the technical University of Vienna and the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava compile already thereby in the project the basis for a future advancement of the technologies. All development are accompanied by continuous intensive reliability and loss investigations. In particular the University of Padua brings in here its comprehensive experiences with reliability tests of GaN elements and failure mechanisms. Parallel to the element development the industrial partners work on the transfer of the technology into an industrial environment to the manufacturing of large numbers of items: The Belgian company EpiGaN concentrates on 200 mm of GaN up SI Epitaxieentwicklungen, while the German enterprise AIXTRON optimizes its epitaxy reactors on the throughput of large quantities. Infineon Technologies Austria AG again evaluates the developed transistor concepts and the GaN up SI wafer of EpiGaN in its process line. Artesyn Austria will demonstrate the efficiency of the again developed technology on the basis an high-efficient inverter system of the kilowatt class, which is to be used for example into basis stations of the newest generation for the mobile communication.

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