The Future of Power Electronics Circuits: New Technologies and Managed Complexity Will Drive the Future

The field of power electronics advances through a number of different innovations, ranging from new and better semiconductors (e.g., power MOSFET, insulated-gate bipolar transistor, gallium nitride, silicon carbide), to improved passive components enabled through material science breakthroughs. Moreover, through improved integration and packaging, higher performance and more complex circuits can be implemented. Thanks to digital control and improved simulation tools, new circuit topologies that better utilize the active and passive devices can be implemented in practical designs. At the 10th IEEE Future of Electronic Power Processing and Conversion (FEPPCON X), several invited speakers and participants presented viewpoints and discussed ideas in the session "Future of Power Electronics Circuits." The two invited speakers were Prof. Johann Kolar of Power Electronic Systems Laboratory at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and Prof. David Perreault of the Power Electronics Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. The session also included two invited panelists, Dr. Isik Kizilyalli of the Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), Washington, D.C., and Prof. Cian O'Mathuna of Tyndall Institute, University College Cork, Ireland. In addition, Prof. Yan-Fei Liu of Queen's University, Canada, served as note-taker and panelist. Finally, serving as session organizer and panelist was Prof. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski of the University of California, Berkeley.