Next Generation of Power Supplies-Design for Manufacturability

In today's market, quality and reliability in power electronics products are a given. Greater emphases are placed on high efficiency, high power density, and low cost. Most products are custom-designed with significant nonrecurrent engineering and manufacturing processes that are labor-intensive. In certain isolated areas, we have witnessed improvements by integrating power devices, drivers, sensing, and control, in the forms of standard power modules, such as the "Intelligent Power Module" (IPM) in small motor drives and "Dr.MOS" in power supplies for point-of load applications. The major road blocks for widespread applications using these more integrated solutions hinge on the ability to integrate large and bulky passive components with power semiconductors in a form suitable for automation. Suffice it to say that the design practice for magnetic components has remained largely the same for the past five decades. With recent advances in wide-bandgap (WBG) power semiconductor devices, namely, SiC and GaN, we have witnessed significant improvements in efficiency and power density, compared with the current practice using silicon counterparts. Furthermore, with significant higher operating frequency, the integration of magnetic components with embedded windings in the PCB is feasible for a wide range of applications. Design trade-offs, previously considered neither practical nor conceivable, can be realized, not only with significant gain in efficiency and power density but also with drastic improvements of EMI/EMC and manufacturability. Several examples are given to illustrate the new design paradigm.