The School of Engineering will lead the power semiconductor devices theme, part of a £23M EPSRC project to create a virtual centre for underpinning power electronics.

The Virtual Centre will be the UK's internationally recognised provider of world-leading power electronics research, combining the country’s best academic talent. It will focus on sustaining and growing power electronics in the UK by delivering transformative and exploitable new technologies, highly skilled people and by providing long-term strategic value to the UK power electronics industry.

The project is split into four high-level themes of devices, components, converters and drives, each of which will address key challenges. The themes will deliver the majority of the technical output of the Centre.

The devices research theme, led by Professor Phil Mawby, focuses on the basic building block of power electronics, namely the semiconductor components. The development of new technology, gaining deeper theoretical insight into the physics of failure, building predictive reliability models and compact models, will enable this programme to support and stimulate UK manufacturing industries and provide internationally leading research output.

The prime focus of the theme will be to develop the next generation of power devices, encompassing both silicon and a new generation of wide band gap materials. The manufacture of these semiconductor components is the core requirement to all forms of electrical power conversion. The limits are continually being pushed to improve the efficiency of the conversion process, and this applies to all power levels from a few watts up to gigawatts. At very high power levels, the semiconductor devices are the rate limiting step in the development of high power conversion for applications, such as off shore wind farm connectivity and smart-grids. New developments in power electronics will undoubtedly have a major impact in this area over the next few years.

Our goal is to achieve a substantial improvement in both the performance and cost-effectiveness of the semiconductor devices which lie at the heart of all power electronics systems, and to gain transformative knowledge in the physics of failure as well as developing predictive reliability models for advanced power electronics.

The research will focus on common objectives that apply to all the diverse applications that power electronics underpins such as cost, power density, increased efficiency, reliability, manufacturability and functionality.

The School of Engineering will also co-investigate as part of the components theme, which is led by the University of Bristol. Professor Li Ran and Dr Olayiwola Alatise will use the School’s state-of-the-art facilities to research and develop the design and reliability of power electronic components.

These components interface with advanced power semiconductor devices and improve the performance of energy conversion systems increasing the speed, energy density and reliability of the devices.

Further information on Electrical Power can be found on our website.