GaN and SiC Power Electronics: From Basics to Application

A greener future requires minimizing the waste of energy. Electric power needs to be converted (multiple times) during its way from primary energy supply to the electronic devices used in our daily lives e.g. from the 220V AC mains to a 12V DC end-user appliance. Key to reducing the energy consumption is thus to maximize the efficiency in power conversion.

This efficiency can be drastically improved by replacing power transistors that are currently based on silicon by wide band gap (WBG) semiconductors such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC). Despite an accelerating adoption of GaN and SiC during the last years for consumer power supplies and automotive inverters, respectively, silicon-based technology is still largely dominating. To unlock the full potential of WBG based devices, we need to study and understand all the different aspects of the power devices, from growing the raw material to packaging and a demonstration of its potential in a final device.

This PhD summer school focusses on the production and development of GaN and SiC wide band gap power transistor devices. The attendees will get a full overview, from growing the raw wide-bandgap materials until packaging for the final application:

1. How wide band gap semiconductors differ from conventional Si semiconductor technology and the physical properties of each material.
2. How to implement the semiconductor material in the device via epitaxial film growth and how to characterize the materials to correlate the processing details to the final properties of the device.
3. How reliable the performance of the final devices is and how to control and improve the reliability.
4. How to produce the power devices on large scale and what the future will bring.

Each aspect is thoroughly discussed during a lecture given by invited experts from academia and industry which are working at the forefront of this field.

This summer school is co-organized by the ESCEL JU funded YESvGaN project (grant no 101007229), KDT JU funded TRANSFORM project (grant no 101007237) and the EMPIR funded PowerElec project (grant no 20IND09). The summer school is supported by the Flemish Government and the doctoral schools of Ghent University.