Power Electronics Integration Technology (PEIT)

Leader: Khai Ngo, Virginia Tech

The mission of the Power Electronics Integration Technology (PEIT) thrust is to conduct fundamental research and to translate engineering basics into materials and integrated building blocks that are employed by the IPCS and IMDS system thrusts to manage energy in a wide range of applications. The PEIT Thrust continues to develop materials, structures, and integration technologies that promote pervasive use of power electronics in energy management.

Until now, PEIT remained at the load-site end of the energy management continuum and targeted delivering Integrated Power Electronics Modules (IPEMs). IPEM R&D will continue in the near term to address such issues as reliability, manufacturability, and commercialization. More significantly, however, is the expansion of research efforts from load-site to larger-scale energy management arenas, such as local-areas and distribution systems, in order to address the energy needs of the nation. The new, harsher application environments will ultimately be served by Integrated Energy Management Blocks (IEMBs). In addition to such fundamental properties as efficiency and power density, robustness, programmability, and networkability are unique IEMB properties that drive technological developments.

In the next few years, PEIT will continue to bring existing IPEM technologies to maturity. For functional integration, the goal is to integrate active and passive IPEMs, which is accompanied by activities in high-temperature packaging, integrated thermal management (passive and active), design-for-reliability, manufacturability, and integrated transmission-line EMI filter (in particular, reducing the lower corner frequency). At the material level, the operating temperature of the nano-scale metal pastes will be pushed toward 300 ?C. Transmission-line filters and electromagnetic sensors will be demonstrated using the multi-functional nano-composite materials.

As CPES pursues pervasive use of power electronics as a part of a national energy strategy, PEIT will be presented with opportunities to develop materials, structures, and building blocks for a much broader energy theater. At the local-area and distribution levels, applications include server/data centers, vehicle systems, micro-grids, and distribution systems. A host of new requirements will be imposed upon the building blocks by the systems. For instance, the efficiency needs to be also high at partial loads, or needs to be optimized for the entire system over its life. The environments will be harsher, with voltages reaching tens of kilovolts and the power reaching hundreds of kilowatts, leading to intense electromagnetic fields, temperature, and mechanical stress. New system architectures will be encountered, e.g., those having multiple phases and multiple levels. In order for the system to be agile and optimized, the building blocks need to be programmable, networkable, and more digitally controllable.