At a ceremony at the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) National Centre for Power Electronics Annual Conference 2016 in Nottingham, UK, a post-graduate team from Imperial College London received the £2000 prize for winning the first annual GaN Systems Geoff Haynes Future Power Challenge.
Sponsored by GaN Systems Inc of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (a fabless developer of gallium nitride-based power switching semiconductors for power conversion and control applications), the competition was open to all UK power electronics postgraduate students who submitted research papers or posters that contributed to accelerating the use of GaN transistors in future power conversion or control applications.
Professor Mark Johnson of The University of Nottingham and professor Barrie Mecrow of Newcastle University judged the competition at the annual summer school event organized by the PhD students of the 10 universities that form the EPSRC National Centre for Power Electronics. The summer school is a student-led event intended to increase communication and co-operation between the research teams and to provide an opportunity for the students to meet with prospective employers and research partners. Entries covered subjects as diverse as the design of a novel compact motor with embedded filter windings, through a reliability study and optimized PWM (pulse width modulation) control strategy for an A-NPC (active neutral-point-clamped) converter.
Ph.D. students George Kkelis and Juan Arteaga together with research assistants Sam Aldhaher and David Yates of Imperial College London's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, supervised by Dr Paul Mitcheson, first presented their work at the IEEE Wireless Power Transfer Conference in May. The team developed two inverter prototypes, each based on a Class EF topology using GaN Systems' GS66504B switches. Their new design maintains zero-voltage switching and delivers a constant-output AC current regardless of the load resistance value. The design allows a Class E or Class EF inverter to operate efficiently for any load. This was shown to significantly relax the requirement for accurate alignment of transmit and receive coils in a wireless power application.
The annual GaN Systems Geoff Haynes Future Power Challenge was established in recognition of Geoff Haynes' critical role in establishing GaN Systems, and championing the use of gallium nitride for power applications. Geoff Haynes retired last year as vice president of GaN Systems but continues to drive the application of the technology by engaging with the research activities of the engineers of the future. Presenting the award, GaN Systems' president & co-founder Girvan Patterson underlined the importance of supporting the research initiatives between industry and academia to accelerate the adoption of disruptive technologies and inspire a new generation of engineers.
