Protecting Power Management Circuits Against Trojan Attacks


A technical paper titled “Hardware Trojans in Power Conversion Circuits” was published by researchers at UC Davis. Abstract: "This report investigates the potential impact of a Trojan attack on power conversion circuits, specifically a switching signal attack designed to trigger a locking of the pulse width modulation (PWM) signal that goes to a power field-effect transistor (FET). The fi... » read more

Cold Plate Technology Comparison


New types of energy, such as wind and solar power, are being utilized more prevalently and hybrid cars/buses are being identified as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions resulting from the use of fossil fuels. Electronic systems like frequency converters for wind power and train utilization are required to provide ever higher levels of energy savings. As such, IGBT (insulated-gate bipol... » read more

A Revolution For Power Conversion Systems — CoolSiC MOSFET


Silicon carbide (SiC) transistors are increasingly used in power converters, placing high demands on the size, weight and/or efficiency. The outstanding material properties of SiC enable the design of fastswitching unipolar devices as opposed to bipolar IGBT devices. Thus, solutions which have been up to now possible in the low-voltage world only (< 600 V) are now possible at higher voltages... » read more

How Silicon Carbide Is Improving Energy Efficiency & Lowering Costs In Industrial Applications


Industrial applications such as server power supplies, uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), and motor drives consume a significant portion of the world’s power. Thus, any increase in the efficiency of any end user power system will substantially reduce a company’s operating costs. Combined with greater power density and better thermal performance, the demand for high-efficiency power suppl... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: April 24


Waste heat to power Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, developed a thin-film system that can be applied to electronics to turn waste heat into energy. The thin-film system uses pyroelectric energy conversion, which is well suited for tapping into waste-heat energy supplies below 100 degrees Celsius, called low-quality waste heat. In particular, the technology might be part... » read more

Semitrex: Efficient Power Conversion


Power conversion is becoming a very big deal in the IoT world, as companies seek to connect the analog/physical world with the digital processing world. Enter Semitrex, a Laguna Beach, Calif.-based startup led by Michael Freeman—the same guy who won Emmy awards for a mobile technology video. His latest incarnation uses what it describes as cascading capacitors in a multi-chip module (MCM)... » read more