Johannes Rudolph, research associate at the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives at Chemnitz University of Technology, observes the 3D printing of housings for power electronic components. Credit: Jacob Müller
For the first time, researchers at Chemnitz University of Technology have successfully 3D-printed housings for power electronic components, which are used, for example, to control electrical machinery. Silicon carbide chips are placed at a predetermined location on the housing during printing.
The 3D printing of housings uses ceramic and metallic pastes, just like the printed motor made of iron, copper, and ceramics that the faculty first displayed at the Hannover Messe in 2018. “These are sintered after the printing process, together—and this is what makes them special—with the imprinted chip,” says Prof. Dr. Ralf Werner, head of the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives.
The field-effect transistors’ gate, drain, and source regions are made contact with copper and are insulated with ceramic. “Contacting the gate area, which normally has an edge length of less than one millimeter, was particularly challenging,” adds Prof. Dr. Thomas Basler, head of the Professorship of Power Electronics, whose team supported the project with initial functional tests on prototypes.
The additively packaged silicon carbide-based power semiconductors have recently been the subject of multiple prototypes made by a research team under the direction of Johannes Rudolph, who contributed to the invention of 3D printing. “In addition to excellent temperature resistance, this technology offers other advantages,” Rudolph said.
The two-sided, flat, and solder-free contacting of the chips is anticipated to increase the chips’ use by improving cooling and extending their service life in terms of load cycles. “Due to the higher thermal conductivity of ceramics compared to plastics and the design freedom common to 3D printing, it is easy to realize specially adapted cooling geometries in the housing and on its surface,” assures The desire for more temperature-resistant power electronics was obvious, because the housings for power electronic components are traditionally installed as close as possible to the engine and should therefore have an equally high-temperature resistance” Rudolph.Johannes Rudolph, research associate at the Professorship of Electrical Energy Conversion Systems and Drives at Chemnitz University of Technology, observes the 3D printing of housings for power electronic components. Credit: Jacob MüllerThe desire for more temperature-resistant power electronics was obvious, because the housings for power electronic components are traditionally installed as close as possible to the engine and should therefore have an equally high-temperature resistance”The secret to shrinking microchips has been discovered by physicists at Indiana University and the University of Tennessee, and it involves helium. “In a traditional system, as you put more transistors on, the wires get smaller,” said Paul Sokol, a professor in the IU Bloomington College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Physics. “But under newly designed systems, it’s like confining the electrons in a one-dimensional tube, and that behavior is quite different from a regular wire.”
Sokol and Adrian Del Maestro, a professor of physics at the University of Tennessee, worked together to build a model system of electronics packed inside a one-dimensional tube in order to explore the behaviour of particles in these conditions. Helium was chosen as a model system for their research because of its well-known interactions with electrons and the ease with which it can be made incredibly pure.
“Think of it like an auditorium,” Sokol said. “People can move around in lots of different ways. But in a long, narrow hall, nobody can move past anyone else, so that behavior becomes different. We’re exploring that behavior where everyone is confined in a row. The big advantage of using a helium model is that we can go from having very few people in the hall to having it packed. We can explore the entire range of physics with this system, which no other system lets us do.”
The researchers also faced numerous other difficulties in developing a one-dimensional helium model system. For instance, it was too challenging to take measurements if they attempted to create a tube tiny enough to store the helium. “You literally need to make a pipe that is only a few atoms wide,” Del Maestro said. “No normal liquid would ever flow through such a narrow pipe, as friction would prevent it.”
The scientists used one-dimensional channel glasses that had been coated with argon to create a smaller channel and nano-engineered a material to address this problem. Then, they could create samples that could support the application of methods like neutron scattering to obtain in-depth knowledge about the system and hold a lot of helium. Del Maestro and Sokol have created a significant new path for this research with their experimental realisation of one-dimensional helium.
You must be logged in to post a comment.