The objective of this research is to demonstrate a transformational paradigm for power management and delivery in different applications such as lighting, mobile handheld electronics, wireless sensors, etc, in order to significantly reduce the global energy consumption. The approach is to use capacitors in innovative ways to enable a capacitor-assisted design paradigm for advancing topologies and architectures of isolated and non-isolated power converters.
The intellectual merits of this project include the developments of the capacitor-assisted multi-level concept and the transformer-less galvanic isolation in high-input-voltage power converters. These breakthroughs will enable power converters to achieve much higher power efficiencies and orders-of-magnitude improvement in the power density compared with existing methods. Another invention on the auto-reconfigurable switched-capacitor topologies will greatly enhance the power efficiency of power converters under unstable input DC conditions.
The broader impact of this project is its potential of achieving significant saving of energy and materials via advancing the power conversion technology in a fundamental way. The energy saving could decrease both imports of energy from foreign sources and the harmful carbon-equivalent emissions, while the material saving through miniaturization could lead to significant cost reduction that would promote U.S. businesses through technological leadership. An integrated educational program that includes the close industrial collaboration, organizing workshops, improving the graduate and undergraduate power management curriculum, and the outreach to high-school and under-represented students, will be developed. Proper evaluations will be emphasized for continuous improvements in all educational activities.
