IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018 - 28

outlook on
Developments in
Power Devices
and Integration
Recent investigations and
future requirements
by Eckart Hoene, Gerald Deboy,
Charles R. Sullivan, and Ger Hurley

T

he switching cell at the heart of power electronic circuits is the central key for improvements in terms of performance, size, cost, and
efficiency, and it will remain this way for the
foreseeable future. Nowadays, developments
in switching cells are driven by different component
manufacturers, e.g., for semiconductors, capacitors,
drivers, and packages. Although there has been tremendous progress, especially on power semiconductors, a
paradigm change is necessary for further advancement
on optimization. Higher switching speeds and lower
switching losses make the handling of discrete components more and more difficult for the average user. Fur-

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2017.2782398
Date of publication: 23 February 2018

28

IEEE PowEr ElEctronIcs MagazInE

z	March 2018

thermore, the interfaces between the components are
evolving to be major bottlenecks in terms of electromagnetic performance.
A necessary next step is to evaluate the direct vicinity of
the switching cell. The semiconductor properties strongly
influence the circuit topology, together with the control
strategy and the magnetics design, including switching
the frequency selection. For further improvements beyond
the technical level achieved today, all of these interdependencies have to be considered. In particular, inductors as
components with comparatively low energy density and
only marginal recent improvements require strategies
to work around this bottleneck. For example, multilevel
topologies allow a reduction in inductor size, but, due to a
higher component number count for the driver, switches,
and control, this has been useful only at higher power levels until recently. Heterogeneous integrated drivers and
2329-9207/18©2018IEEE



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018

Contents
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IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018 - Cover2
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - March 2018 - Contents
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