Power Electronics: cooking up group IV semiconductor materials
The Power Electronics Group has a broad spectrum of research over the product tree, from materials, to devices, to modules, to converters to end applications. Dr Shah concentrates his efforts on improving the raw ingredients, various flavours of group IV semiconductors (Si, Ge, SiC) using the UK’s only SiC Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD) funded by the EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics. These base materials and their manufacturability are key in all electronics technologies, where the fundamental trade-offs between throughput and quality are ubiquitous. In this talk, a taste will be given of how material defects and other properties affect the reliability and performance of devices. We will then feast on Warwick’s research and facilities in this area, which strives to improve the production trade-off of the most state of the art material - Silicon Carbide, which allows high voltage, high frequency and harsh environment power electronics. This new force de majeure is almost completely chemically inert and requires ultra high temperatures (>1600 C) to be processed, increasing production difficulty and requiring new approaches to traditional processes.