Phase I IUCRC at Dartmouth College: Center for Integrated Power Management Circuits and Systems - Power One IC

微电子和集成电路给计算、通信和信息技术带来了革命性的变化。然而，在各种应用中，尺寸、成本、性能和电池寿命越来越受到处理功率和能量的系统的限制。电源管理集成中心(PMIC)将与行业合作伙伴接触，并在高效、高密度电力电子、无源元件和集成战略方面进行有针对性的研究。该中心的总体目标是解决与电力和能源管理相关的瓶颈问题，这些瓶颈影响到从性能和移动计算到可再生能源、汽车和工业电子等各种行业。在这些行业中，该中心将致力于帮助缓解关键的性能、包装和成本限制，并实现持续改进，从而产生经济效益。该中心将把领先的学术研究人员与庞大的、不断增长的行业基础联系起来，这些行业基础非常需要协作、跨学科研究以及劳动力发展。研究生和本科生的教育课程将满足这一需求，而K-12课程的推广将有助于扩大对电力和能源管理学科的认识。该计划将重点招聘和培训来自代表性不足背景的工程师，以达特茅斯在招聘和留住工程领域女性方面的成功为基础。与显著受益于半导体规模的传统模拟和数字电路不同，电源管理系统依赖于受制于麦克斯韦方程、材料特性和实际实施的无源元件和电路架构。因此，解决电源管理中的瓶颈需要在电子和电路架构、无源和有源器件以及集成策略方面进行多学科创新。PMIC中心将致力于利用新材料和无源元件实施的一系列创新，最大限度地利用可用能量和功率密度的新电路架构，以及利用半导体铸造厂和先进制造的集成战略。无源元件的建模、设计和制造将通过研究来推进，包括使用先进模型优化功率密度和效率、使用纳米复合材料的在硅微细制造电感和集成谐振式无源元件。电力电子电路的研究将集中在最大限度地利用有源器件和无源元件的新颖架构上，促进向毫米级或单片集成的路线图。与行业合作伙伴相关的具体应用目标也将被考虑，如可靠性、稳健性和在高温、恶劣环境中的性能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Microelectronics and integrated circuits have revolutionized computing, communication, and information technology. However, in a variety of applications, size, cost, performance, and battery life are increasingly limited by systems that process power and energy. The Center for Power Management Integration (PMIC) will engage with industry partners and conduct targeted research in efficient, high-density power electronics, passive components, and integration strategies. The overall goal of the center is to address bottlenecks related to power and energy management that affect a variety of sectors from performance and mobile computing, to renewable energy, automotive, and industrial electronics. Across these industries, the center will work to help alleviate key performance, packaging, and cost limitations, and enable continued improvements with resulting economic benefits. The center will connect leading academic researchers with a large and growing industry base that has a great need for collaborative, interdisciplinary research as well as workforce development. Educational programs at the graduate and undergraduate levels will address this need while K-12 outreach will help expand awareness of power and energy management disciplines. The program will emphasize recruiting and training engineers from underrepresented backgrounds, building on Dartmouth's success in recruiting and retaining women in engineering.Unlike traditional analog and digital circuits that have dramatically benefited from semiconductor scaling, power management systems depend on passive components and circuit architectures subject to Maxwell's equations, material properties, and practical implementation. Thus, addressing bottlenecks in power management requires multidisciplinary innovation in electronics and circuit architectures, passive and active devices, and integration strategies. The PMIC Center will target a range of innovations that leverage novel materials and passive component implementation, new circuit architectures that maximize utilization of available energy- and power-density, and integration strategies leveraging semiconductor foundries and advanced manufacturing. Modeling, design and fabrication of passive components will be advanced through research including optimization of power density and efficiency using advanced models, on-silicon microfabricated inductors using nanocomposite materials and integrated resonant passive components. Research on power electronic circuits will focus on novel architectures that maximize utilization of both active devices and passive components, facilitating a roadmap to mm-scale or monolithic integration. Application-specific objectives relevant to industry partners will also be considered such as reliability, robustness, and performance in high temperature, harsh environments.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.