High-Reliability Fault-Tolerant Gallium Nitride Power Electronic Converters and ICs

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Power Electronic Converters (PEC) have played a pivotal role in the steadily increasing global energy efficiency over the past 50 years, across transportation, industrial, commercial and residential sectors. The power semiconductor market has exceeded $ 14 Billion today with an annual growth rate above 10%. The latest 2018 IPCC report underscores the urgent need for cheap yet reliable low-carbon technologies. Rapid mass-deployment of Photovoltaics (PV) generation and Electric Vehicles (EV) is needed to alleviate our global energy challenges. PV generation in Canada will rapidly grow from 2 GW in 2015 to between 8 and 25 GW by 2040, depending on public policy and drastic cost reductions in PV technology. When charged from renewable energy, EVs have an efficiency of 73%, compared to 13% for gasoline powered cars, yet EVs represent less than 1% of the car market in Canada today. Wide-bandgap power semiconductor devices, namely Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN), have spawned a revolution in power electronics. This has led to PECs with unprecedented power density enabled by high-frequency switching and low losses. SiC offers 10x the breakdown field of silicon with 2.5x higher thermal conductivity. GaN technology, with a projected market of $ 320 Million by 2022, promises even better performance than SiC due to a 2.5x higher breakdown field. GaN-on-silicon lateral devices offer a unique opportunity to integrate not only multiple power devices on chip, but also gate-drivers and even advanced control and protection circuits. GaN is thus uniquely suited to many PEC topologies used in PV, EV and datacenter applications. This research program will focus on high-voltage GaN based PECs with two complimentary streams: 1) GaN integrated circuits and 2) architectures and control techniques for fault tolerance and system reliability enhancement. The recent literature demonstrates both the feasibility and promise of high-voltage GaN power ICs and converters, however many key questions need to be addressed: 1) what is the best level of integration for power-stage/driver/control features, 2) what performance can practically be achieved in GaN analog circuits, 3) what level of digital functionality is feasible in GaN despite device limitations, 4) can monolithic current protection overcome the lack of short-circuit immunity in GaN, and 5) how can state-of-health monitoring be leveraged to enhance system reliability. The five-year program will fund eight HQPs (four PhD and four Masters students). The program outcomes will answer key questions about the viability and advantages of highly integrated GaN power converters in clean-tech applications. This program will grow Canada's competitive advantage in power electronics and energy management, both from the direct commercialization potential, as well as the high-impact HQP training. This program is directly aligned with NSERC's 2020 strategic plan to address shared global challenges in energy.