Dr Santosh Kulkarni from the research group of Professor Cian Ó’Mathúna, CONNECT Principal Investigator at Tyndall National Institute, has won a €508,000 Science Foundation Ireland Starter Investigator Research Grant (SIRG). Dr Plamen Stamenov (AMBER & Trinity College Dublin) will be an external collaborator on the project.
Here is an overview of the project:
Advanced Power Magnetics Programme for High Efficiency Power Supplies
‘The trend towards miniaturisation and increasing functionality of embedded electronic components is creating new challenges in the fields of electronic engineering and materials science. One of the principle limiting factors inhibiting device miniaturisation is presently posed by the large sized power processing units. The passive electronic circuit elements typify the problem, where size reduction poses a highly non-trivial issue to be surmounted. To this end, discrete soft magnetic thin films based passive components (inductors, transformers) with low loss at high-frequency have recently become the focus of intensive studies due to their significance in a range of power applications. The emergence of wide bandgap materials has enabled the development of power circuits with faster switching speeds, in turn facilitating passive miniaturisation. However, the existing ferrite based passive technology, while highly efficient, does not allow for further miniaturisation due to their low saturation property.
Science Foundation Ireland funded SIRG project ADMAPS builds on key achievements from CCAN funded NanoMaPS and ongoing EI funded CF project PreMag. While, these projects demonstrate the performance of amorphous/nanocrystalline soft magnetic thin film alloy systems as possible replacement for ferrites, ADMAPS will address the fundamental challenges in developing new alloy systems based on Bulk Metallic Glass systems to deliver a high performance power magnetics material. This project proposes to address four critical challenges in the realisation of a high performance discrete magnetic passive component, (1) ultra low-loss Bulk Metallic Glass (BMG) soft magnetic alloy, (2) optimized BMG composition through modelling, (3) shape independent thin-film power loss characterization system, (4) offline power topologies using discrete thin film alloys.
CONNECT is the world leading Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks and Communications. CONNECT is funded under the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centres Programme and is co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund. We engage with over 35 companies including large multinationals, SMEs and start-ups. CONNECT brings together world-class expertise from ten Irish academic institutes to create a one-stop-shop for telecommunications research, development and innovation.
Articles
