High-Bandwidth Sensing for Wide-bandgap Power Conversion

该项目开发用于电力电子系统的新传感技术，帮助英国更好地与全球电力电子领导者竞争。电力电子是一项关键的电气化技术：电动汽车、可再生能源发电、我们的电网以及任何需要精确计量电力流量的地方都需要电力电子。通过快速开关电流以产生所需的平均值来进行该配量。这项技术减少了我们的碳足迹，每年为英国经济贡献近500亿英镑，并为400多家英国公司提供82，000个技术工作岗位（2016年数据）。电力电子行业正在发生重大变化，因为最近出现了由碳化硅（SiC）或氮化镓（GaN）制成的超快晶体管，这些新型晶体管的开关速度快10倍，从而使功率转换器的能量损失减少75%，并使转换器的尺寸缩小到以前的一半以下。这使得将它们构建到其他系统中变得更加容易，例如电动汽车，从而使汽车更轻，为电池提供更大的空间。该项目旨在帮助最大限度地发挥新晶体管的潜力。许多公司正在努力采用它们，因为虽然非常快速的开关提供了提高效率和从根本上缩小系统尺寸的好处，但它也带来了电磁干扰以及设备和系统可靠性的问题。晶体管开关电流的速度非常快（不到10纳秒，光传播3米所需的时间），以至于工程师无法准确测量电压和电流在这段时间内的变化，即使使用他们最好的设备，这意味着很难解决干扰等问题。正因为如此，即使是领先的公司也在放慢这些新晶体管的速度，并失去了它们的一些效率潜力。我们的项目开发了小型，低成本的传感器，使这些纳秒级的变化可见。它们将使工程师能够准确地看到晶体管是如何切换的，帮助他们开发更好、更小、更轻、更可靠的电力电子产品。它们将允许计算机控制的SiC和GaN功率转换器在产生太多电磁噪声时进行感应，并通过更智能地切换来减少电磁噪声。它将允许电源电路检测外部短路，并在它们损坏电源转换器之前将其隔离。我们还在开发传感器，直接为工程师或控制系统提供所需的信息（例如设备温度），而不必从电压和电流间接推断，从而使测量更快，更高效。传感器通过线圈，导电板或天线检测电场或磁场来工作。接收到的信号被送入传感器内部的芯片，计算所需的参数。这些新的SiC和GaN晶体管首次使电路板上的小型场传感器变得可行，因为随着信号速度的增加，这些信号的波长变得更短（厘米级），这意味着它们的场可以用毫米级线圈或天线拾取。为了确保我们开发出行业所需的产品，我们正在与汽车、可再生能源、半导体、商业研发组织等12个合作伙伴合作，这些合作伙伴具有深厚的行业经验，我们还将根据要求接受新的合作伙伴。我们的项目为合作伙伴和其他英国公司和大学提供样品传感器。他们的反馈以及与合作伙伴的讨论有助于我们确定研究的优先顺序，并确保我们将研究资金用于解决最重要的问题。我们提供研讨会，帮助工程师掌握最新的先进测量技术，并将我们的结果在线保存（出版物和专用网站），供公司根据需要使用。

This project develops new sensing technology for use in power electronic systems, helping the UK to better compete with global leaders in power electronics. Power electronics is a key electrification technology: it is needed in electric vehicles, renewable energy generation, our electricity grid, and anywhere where the flow of power needs to be accurately dosed. This dosing is carried out by rapidly switching currents on and off to create the desired average. This technology reduces our carbon footprint and contributes nearly £50bn per year to the UK economy and supports 82,000 skilled jobs in over 400 UK-based companies (2016 data).The power electronics industry is undergoing significant change, as ultra-fast transistors made from silicon carbide (SiC) or gallium nitride (GaN) have recently emerged, to replace silicon transistors.These new transistors switch 10x faster, which results in 75% less energy being lost in power converters, and enables converters to be shrunk to less than half their previous size. This makes it much easier to build them into other systems, e.g. electric vehicles, resulting in lighter cars with more space for batteries.This project is about helping to maximise the potential of the new transistors. Many companies are struggling to adopt them, because whilst the very fast switching provides the benefits of improved efficiency and radically smaller system size, it also creates problems with electromagnetic interference, and device and system reliability. The transistors switch current on or off so fast (in less than ten nanoseconds, the time it takes light to travel 3 meters), that engineers cannot accurately measure how the voltages and currents change during this time, even with their best equipment, which means it is difficult to fix problems such as interference. Because of this, even the leading companies are slowing down these new transistors, and losing some of their efficiency potential.Our project develops small, low-cost sensors, that make these nanosecond-scale changes visible. They will allow engineers to see exactly how the transistors are switching, helping them develop better, smaller, lighter, and more reliable power electronics. They will allow computer-controlled SiC and GaN power converters to sense when they are creating too much electromagnetic noise, and reduce this by switching more intelligently. It will allow power circuits to detect external short circuits and isolate these before they damage the power converter. We are also developing sensors that provide engineers, or control systems, directly with information that they need (e.g. device temperature), rather than having to infer this indirectly from volts and amps, making the measurements faster and more efficient.The sensors work by detecting electric or magnetic fields via coils, conductive plates, or antennas. The received signal is fed into a chip inside the sensor that computes the required parameter. These new SiC and GaN transistors have made small field sensors on circuit boards viable for the first time, because as signal speeds increase, the wavelengths of these signals become shorter (cm-scale), meaning that their fields can be picked up with millimetre-size coils or antennas. In order to ensure that we develop what industry needs, we are working with 12 partners across automotive, renewable energy, semiconductors, commercial R&D organisations with deep sector experience, and we are accepting new collaborators on request. Our project provides partners and other UK companies and universities with sample sensors. Their feedback, and discussions with partners helps us prioritise our research, and ensures that we are using our research funds to solve the most important problems. We are providing workshops to help keep engineers up-to-date with advanced measurement techniques, and keeping our results online (publications and a dedicated website) for companies to use as desired.