IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2022 - 4

From the Editor
by Ashok Bindra
Wide Bandgap Devices Continue to
Evolve for Aerospace Applications
F
rom electric aircrafts to satellites
and unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAVs), the need for fuel saving
and greenhouse reduction continues
relentlessly. As a result, electrification
seems to be catching rapidly in aerospace
and aviation applications. This
demands new generation of power converters,
motor drives, and solid-state
circuit breakers with unprecedented
power density, efficiency, and reliability.
Wide bandgap (WBG) power devices,
such as silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFETs
and gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron
mobility transistors (HEMTs) and gate
injection transistors (GITs), are regarded
as critical candidates for such applications.
While WBG devices have been
serving the needs of commercial and
industrial systems for more than a
decade, there are still many challenges
for WBG devices and their circuits for
aviation applications, which include
radiation hardness, extreme operation
temperature, high altitude, high-voltage,
high dv/dt, and high di/dt operation
induced issues.
In the cover feature " Wide Bandgap
Based Power Electronics for Aerospace
Applications, " by Jin Wang, the
author shows that WBG devices are
gradually finding their ways into
aerospace applications. Besides discussing
the common challenges, such
as radiation hardness, extreme operation
temperature, high altitude, and
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MPEL.2022.3196232
Date of publication: 28 September 2022
high-voltage, encountered in these
applications, the article highlights thermal
management, EMI mitigation and
dv/dt filter designs, and current sharing
between power modules as additional
challenges for aerospace applications.
Consequently, lab safety needs more
attention because of the involvement of
high-voltage, low air pressure, radiation,
and cryogenic temperature, which
are not generally encountered in other
applications. So, as per Wang's article,
safety rules, procedures, and related
trainings are needed. Also, the article
suggests that there will soon be a lack
of workforce due to the rapid development
of more electric aircraft (MEA),
electric vertical take-off and landing
(eVTOL) aircrafts, UAV, electric propulsion,
and space exploration. Consequently,
more investment from
governments and industry are needed
to attract and train students and engineers
to work on WBG-based power
electronics for aerospace systems, concludes
the author.
The second feature " Wide Bandgap
Semiconductor Based Power Electronics
for Aviation " by Fei (Fred)
Wang, Ruirui Chen, and Kaushik
Rajashekara, also focuses on the
cover theme. This article suggests
that many of the same WBG-based
power electronics technologies can
also be extended to future electrified
spacecraft applications, where the
requirements on power density, specific
power, efficiency, reliability, and
the operating environment for power
4 IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE z September 2022
electronics will be even more challenging.
Furthermore, it shows that
WBG-based power electronics can
also play an important role for satellites,
future space stations, lunarbased
electric power systems, and
other space exploration applications.
The third feature " Totem-Pole PFC
Reliability and Performance Improvement
with Advanced Controls " by
Zhong (John) Ye, Danyang Zhu, and
Hailong Yang unveils a novel continuous
conduction mode (CCM) totempole
PFC analog controller, which is
combined with a 2.5 kW SiC MOSFET
to demonstrate the robustness and
performance improvement of totempole
PFC prototype. The fourth feature
" Fault-Tolerant Isolated DC-DC
Converters: Survey of Technologies
and Application Challenges " by
Abualkasim Bakeer, Andrii Chub, and
Dmitri Vinnikov discusses three fault
tolerant (FT) approaches to overcoming
semiconductor faults in galvanically
isolated dc-dc converters using
series resonant converter as the reference
topology. Amongst them, the
zero redundancy FT approach shows
the lowest implementation cost but
requires some degree of power curtailment
after a fault. In essence, it
shows that the zero-redundancy FT
approach is the best for numerous
emerging applications where the cost
of implementation is essential while
the performance of the post-fault
operation is allowed to deteriorate
reasonably.
IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - September 2022

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