EFFICIENCY OF GALLIUM NITRIDE SEMICONDUCTOR SWITCHING COMPONENTS

Open Access
- Author:
- Matzik, Andrew James
- Area of Honors:
- Electro-Mechanical Engineering Technology
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Dr. Todd Batzel, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. Laura Rotunno, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- Gallium Nitride
transistors
efficiency
switched capacitor
power electronics - Abstract:
- The primary purpose of this work is to analyze the operation and efficiency of the Gallium Nitride switching devices in the three-level switched capacitor topology. Switching devices are small components, called transistors, that are great at switching voltage or current at high frequencies. Transistors make it possible to create circuits such as a power converter that takes a DC voltage and converts it to an AC voltage. Transistors are utilized in a prodigious amount of applications that are used on a daily basis such as in cellphones and electric motor controls. The wide use of the switching devices is a big reason why it is important to study the efficiency of the switching devices. By knowing how efficient the Gallium Nitride switching devices are in certain circuit topologies, designers would then be able to create even more efficient devices for consumer and industrial applications. Another reason why it is important to improve the efficiency of the switching devices is because nearly half of the power generated in power plants goes into factories to power electric motors. Therefore, since the switching devices are part of the control circuitry for these motors, the more efficient the control circuitry the less power losses that occur, hence cost and energy is saved. This research project is rather broad in scope so it was conducted over two semesters. The first semester was focused more of the design and simulation of the circuitry while the second semester was the actual construction and implementation of the circuit. In the first semester, the design of a power electronics building block (PEBB) started using Multisim 14.0, which is a circuit simulation software. The circuit created was half of a three-level switched capacitor circuit and so two boards were cascaded together to form the total three level switched capacitor circuit. Efficiency of the circuit topology will then be analyzed and compared to that of other types of transistors such as the Silicon transistor.