From the acquisition of centralized information through telecom giants and wireless broadcasters to the advent of wireline phones and cable television, the way people interact with data has changed dramatically since 30 years ago. Today, the development of high-voltage power supplies is following a similar development path.
The size and shape of the product are gradually shrinking, and the power conversion that can be achieved is getting higher and higher. In daily life, people have put forward more requirements for efficacy, intelligence and packaging. At present, the battery storage capacity of mobile devices has been considerable, and efforts are still being made to meet people's needs and expectations.
From a larger perspective, we are seeing that data centers are also growing, and the total amount of power consumed is always above 70 megawatts. This is an energy consumption that cannot be ignored, even when they are idle or ready to process web search information. In the automotive sector, electric vehicles can be powered by an 800V battery supply while supporting 12V and 18V rails. To achieve such applications, new power devices and efficient power conversion between different voltage domains are needed.
Electricity is no longer transmitted only by large power plants and miles of AC power lines. In fact, people can collect energy from the solar panels on the roof and then sell it back to the grid. A battery that is mounted on the wall and charged by solar panels every day provides enough power to eliminate the need to power the grid. Even perhaps one day in the future, electric vehicles will become an energy storage center.
Just as data is no longer concentrated, and it can be interconnected and stored in multiple ways – from cloud-based servers to portable USB, huge changes in power generation, energy storage, power distribution and transmission will also be for us. The way life and work work has a profound impact.
However, the relationship between data and power is not just the same as how they evolved. In some of today's applications, they begin to converge and are capable of being transmitted over next-generation USB-connected devices, while being embedded deeper into high-voltage applications through the isolation barrier in the integrated chip. This series of changes is having a huge impact on innovation in the semiconductor industry.
energy efficiency
We live in a digital world of high energy consumption. Every time you view social media information, pay bills, download e-books, or send e-mails, you'll use a huge number of servers in a huge data center.
When these servers are ready to process or are processing information, they require a lot of power. The demand for electricity has kept the server running, while also allowing more electric and hybrid cars to appear on the road, and this demand has injected new vitality into the rising electronic wave.
As these innovations are gradually integrated into everyday life, our demand for continued growth in electrical energy will never end. The improvement of energy efficiency is imminent.
Breakthrough material
Similar to the data, the current development of power supplies is also ever-changing. Efficient power conversion modules are required for high-voltage power conversion from AC to DC, DC to DC, or DC to AC. As power demand continues to grow, these modules will also require more efficient and better-performing technologies and will be able to deliver high-voltage power under harsh conditions.
This is where advanced technologies based on GaN, silicon carbide and silicon superjunctions are used. These materials generate less heat than traditional silicon power devices, which means they can efficiently transfer high-voltage power between multiple sources and enable efficient conversion from one source to another.
These breakthrough technologies require complex circuit architectures and packaging technologies that are completely different from the architecture that has laid a solid foundation for decades of semiconductor development. In addition, although traditional CMOS technology has generally followed Moore's Law, that is, data transmission and processing rates are doubled every few years, and these new materials will make breakthroughs in high-voltage power density every five to ten years.
Improvements such as these are critical to a highly electrified world. In battery operating systems, the need for higher efficiency is key because battery technology is hard to keep up with the pace of new features. In addition, improvements and enhancements in power management are critical to the ever-increasing number of data centers used to implement a variety of connected device applications. Servers in these data centers consume a lot of power, and semiconductor technology will increase their efficiency by reducing the number of buck power conversions.
In automotive applications, designers are integrating more high-energy, high-voltage electronic components into vehicles every year. Interestingly, for every 100W of power added, there will be an increase in manufacturing costs of $5, while car power is growing at a rate of 100W per year. For electric vehicles, power may increase even faster. Advanced power devices, gallium nitride and silicon carbide, will play an increasingly important role in these circuits because they increase power density. For example, for an electric vehicle, this means that the battery has a shorter charging time, a longer battery life, a longer cruising range, and the ability to run more high voltage systems.
USB Type-CTM technology
Power and data in the next generation of USB Type-C connections are intermingling and are changing the way we use these technologies on a daily basis. For example, most laptops currently include several interfaces for charging, display, audio, and more traditional USB connections.
The USB Type-C, which is becoming the new standard, combines all of these data and power interfaces into one high-capacity line and is not limited by the pros and cons of the plug.
Isolation barrier
From air conditioning systems to factory automation applications, power and data also converge across the isolation barriers in high voltage circuits. The demand for independent power supplies is growing rapidly, and while the ability to transmit data across the isolation barrier has been implemented for several years, there is still a need for a discrete transformer that takes up valuable board space and creates reliability problems for power transmission. .
However, a new device from Texas Instruments (TI), the ISOW7841, has solved this problem by integrating multiple silicon wafers and a transformer in a single package. In addition, compared to other solutions on the market, the ISOW7841 is 80% more efficient in power transmission and quieter in operation.
Customized Laboratory Testing Instruments
Wuxi Lerin New Energy Technology Co.,Ltd. , https://www.lerin-tech.com