So you think you know your power circuits? Prove it! Ace our little quiz on gallium-nitride FET circuit design and you can win your very own signed copy of GaN uber guru Alex Lidow’s GaN Transistors for Efficient Power Conversion, 2nd Edition.Alex Lidow is CEO of Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (EPC) and was CEO of […]
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Podcast: Where engineers trying to learn power GaN get into trouble
Gallium nitride (GaN) is one of the technologies that could well displace silicon MOSFETs in the next generation of power transistors. As silicon approaches its performance limits, GaN devices conduct better and switch faster. But GaN devices don’t behave the way silicon power devices do. That’s the reason for the recently published textbook GaN Transistors […]
Power fail videos of the week
Smoked components seems to be the theme for this week. And now, a moment of silence for the cooling fans, resistors, capacitors, and displays that all made the ultimate sacrifice in the interest of entertaining bored techies……….. Small components meet high voltages Most engineers know what happens in the case of an overvoltage. For non-believers, […]
Gallery: Scenes from the IEEE ECCE conference
The IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition took place last week in Pittsburgh. The clear trends based on exhibits on the show floor included a lot of interest in SiC power devices and in alternative topologies for inverters. Here are a few of the more interesting sites we encountered there. SiC on display The Center […]
MOSFET Drivers – what are they and why do we need them?
There are a lot of MOSFET drivers around these days. MOSFET drivers often contain MOSFETs themselves. There are several reasons for needing MOSFET drivers: Drive current – MOSFETs can have very high gate capacitance. For example, the IRF530NS from International Rectifier is a 90mW device which can withstand 17A continuous drain current at 100V and […]
Super-junction MOSFET market could equal that of ….. dating services?
A new market research report called “Super Junction MOSFET Market by FAB Technology (Multiple-Epitaxy, Deep-Trench), Packaging Technology Material (Substrate, Transition Layer, Electrode), Application (Power Supply, Display, Lighting, EV/HEV, Industrial) & by Geography- Global Trends & Forecasts to 2013 – 2020″, sees the SJ-MOSFET market crossing $2.20 billion by 2020, growing at a high CAGR from 2013 to 2020. […]
This week’s power electronics fail videos: Zapped engineers, zapped components
The five best fail videos in power electronics we found this week.
Dozen best web sites for power electronics design
We recently spent an afternoon perusing the web in search of good power electronics stuff. We came up with a dozen sites that provided educational material or other information that can come in handy for engineers working in power electronics. Switching-Mode Power Supply Websites –- The creator of this list of sites says the major […]
Coming in September: Sixth Annual IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exhibition to kick off in Pittsburgh
The Sixth Annual IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exhibition (ECCE 2014), “Your Bridge to a Clean and Sustainable Energy Future,” will come to Pittsburgh, Pa. Sept. 14 through 18. The event will include an expo area of about 40 exhibitors. On Tuesday Sept. 16, admission to the exhibits will be free to the public as […]
New Slimline 650W cPCI Pluggable PSU
Verotec has extended its range of pluggable power supplies optimised for use in CompactPCI systems with the introduction of a quad output 650W unit. To meet the PICMG 2.11 Power Interface high power requirements on the 3.3 and 5V rails, the compact slimline 6U 8HP 160mm unit features two independent converters operating in parallel enabling […]
