Marelli Motorsport and the Power Electronics Innovation Center (PEIC) of Politecnico di Torino are announcing a new collaboration, regarding the Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology area for power electronics, aimed at electric engines.
The collaboration is aiming at the design and prototyping of an innovative multi-level 900V high power inverter for electric traction based on GaN technology.
Gallium Nitride allows a radical reduction of passive components (e.g. inductors, capacitors, transformers), while maintaining an outstanding efficiency. In the last years, the GaN technology has been evolving rapidly in terms of conduction and switching performance. In addition, since the lateral GaN devices are grown on standard silicon wafers, their cost is already highly competitive.
GaN technology opens new horizons in the power converter design innovations, in which the collaboration has the aim to excel in terms of high efficiency multilevel architectures, optimal and robust gate driving and device parallelization, high frequency and high temperature capacitor technologies, integration of capacitors and semiconductors on PCB (Printed Circuit Board) for cost reduction, advanced cooling solutions.
The concept study started back in 2021 and at present it is in the prototyping phase, which is planning to undergo two development steps withing 2022. The GaN component supplier selected for the prototype phase is VisIC Technologies.
