US DoE announces SiC packaging projects
The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Electricity (OE) has announced the eight winners of the SiC Packaging Prize Phase 1 who will receive $50,000 each in cash prizes (from a $400,000 total prize pool).
Prize winners will design, build, and test state-of-the-art SiC semiconductor packaging prototypes to enable these devices to work more effectively in high-voltage environments such as energy storage. The winners are a follows:
- Board Breakers (Fargo, North Dakota), who are creating a replacement of traditional power electronic modules by using additive manufacturing to print 3D ceramic packaging.
- LincolnX (Lincoln, Nebraska), which plans to develop novel ultrafast and scalable SiC modules featuring dual orthogonal cooling to meet the prize goals and metrics.
- Marel Power Solutions (Plymouth, Michigan), which has a project to make packaging improvements through thermal management, 2D mechatronic design, and a scalable arrangement of power switches.
- NC Solar Inverters (Cary, North Carolina), will be using commercially available topside cooled discrete devices. The team will utilise their designed symmetric layout to maximise parasitic flying capacitance and minimise parasitic inductance.
- NoMIS-Lux-QPT-UA (Albany, New York) will combine their technology and products in Smart Metal Core SiC power blocks to create high voltage chip-scale packaging.
- Stony Brook Power Packaging Team (Stony Brook, New York) will develop high-voltage, high-current, fast-switching, and cost-effective modules and create a business entity for engineering sampling and commercialisation.
- Superior SiC Power Module Team (Gainesville, Florida) plans to develop an interdisciplinary approach for SiC power modules with high-speed, high-energy efficiency, and low EMI.
- Finally, Team Raiju - University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, Arkansas) will embed 128 SiC die in LTCC controlled by an active dV/dt voltage balancer and cooled with integrated microchannel busbars.
In Phase 2, winning teams from Phase 1 will develop a physical prototype of their SiC packaging solution that meets Phase 2 metrics. In this phase, teams must send their prototypes to a national lab for testing to validate the metrics achieved. At the end of Phase 2, up to four winning teams will receive $250,000 each and become eligible to compete in Phase 3.
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