Pursuing a “Moore’s Law” for Power Electronics

As processors and controllers of electrical energy, power electronics are key drivers of innovation in transportation, energy systems, aerospace, computing, manufacturing, healthcare, consumer electronics, and more. However, unlike information-processing circuits, power electronics are challenging to miniaturize and have yet to undergo the extreme scaling that underpins microelectronics today. While major advances have been enabled by advanced semiconductor devices and control capabilities, further progress is now primarily bottlenecked by the energy storage components they depend on, particularly magnetics (i.e., inductors and transformers). Dramatic miniaturization of power electronics will therefore require new approaches to power conversion with superior power density and performance at small sizes.

This talk explores how we can leverage an alternative energy storage modality - electromechanical energy storage in piezoelectric resonators - to unlock a new era of scalability for power electronics. Unlike magnetics, piezoelectric resonators offer power densities that fundamentally improve as they shrink, among numerous other advantages in size, performance, and manufacturability. Realizing these advantages, however, will require new design strategies for both power electronic circuits and the resonators themselves. Accordingly, this talk will present recent advances in (1) circuit topologies and control for resonator-based dc-dc converters and “active inductors”, and (2) piezoelectric component design concepts including isolated piezoelectric transformers and “overtone” piezoelectric resonators. These strategies enable high-performance use of piezoelectric resonators as energy storage components across a wide range of applications, laying a foundation for power electronics that scale favorably to small sizes.

Speaker: Jessica Boles, UC Berkeley