News: Microelectronics
5 December 2024
US DoE awards eight winners for Phase 1 of Silicon Carbide (SiC) Packaging Prize
The US Department of Energy’s (DoE) Office of Electricity (OE) has announced the eight winners of the Silicon Carbide (SiC) Packaging Prize Phase 1 who will receive $50,000 each in cash prizes (from a $400,000 total prize pool). Awarded in three phases, the total $2.25m prize is part of the American-Made Challenges Program, which fosters collaboration between the USA’s entrepreneurs and innovators, DOE’s National Labs, and the private sector.
Prize winners will design, build and test state-of-the-art SiC semiconductor packaging prototypes to enable these devices to work more effectively in high-voltage environments such as energy storage. The Phase 1 prize winners are:
- Board Breakers (Fargo, North Dakota), which is creating a replacement for traditional power electronic modules by using additive manufacturing to print 3D ceramic packaging.
- LincolnX (Lincoln, Nebraska), which plans to develop novel ultrafast and scalable SiC modules featuring dual orthogonal cooling to meet the prize goals and metrics.
- Marel Power Solutions (Plymouth, Michigan), which plans to make packaging improvements through thermal management, three-dimensional mechatronic design, and a scalable arrangement of power switches.
- NC Solar Inverters (Cary, North Carolina), which — using commercially available topside-cooled discrete devices — will utilize its designed symmetric layout to maximize parasitic flying capacitance and minimize parasitic inductance..
- NoMIS-Lux-QPT-UA (Albany, New York), consisting of NoMIS, Lux, QPT, and UofA, will combine their technology and products in Smart Metal Core SiC power blocks to create high-voltage chip-scale packaging.
- Stony Brook Power Packaging Team (Stony Brook, New York), which will develop high-voltage, high-current, fast-switching, and cost-effective modules and create a business entity for engineering sampling and commercialization.
- Superior SiC Power Module Team (Gainesville, Florida), which plans to develop an interdisciplinary approach for SiC power modules with high-speed, high-energy efficiency, and low EMI.
- Team Raiju - University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, Arkansas), which will embed 128 SiC die in LTCC controlled by an active dV/dt voltage balancer and cooled with integrated micro-channel bus bars.
In Phase 2, winning teams from Phase 1 will develop a physical prototype of their SiC packaging solution that meets Phase 2 metrics. In this phase, teams must send their prototypes to a national lab for testing to validate the metrics achieved. At the end of Phase 2, up to four winning teams will receive $250,000 each and become eligible to compete in Phase 3.
US DoE grants University of Arkansas $1m to develop prototype 15kV silicon carbide power modules
DOE launches $2.25m American-Made Silicon Carbide Packaging Prize
