The proposed project seeks financial support for the participation of student, underrepresented groups and young researchers in the Symposium on GaN and SiC Power Technologies 3 at the 224th Electrochemical Society (ECS) Meeting to be held Oct. 27 - Nov. 1, 2013 in San Francisco, CA.. The Symposium will address research areas related to developing and delivering an Integrated Power Electronics Curriculum from Components to Systems. The program includes invited presentations by active experts in the field as well as regular papers, to enable dissemination of the current ideas and to foster critical discussion on the diverse applications. The speakers will explain how to implement the proposed curricular changes in the current engineering curriculum. Discussions on how to proceed to ensure the adoption of an integrated curriculum in power electronics components, technologies, and systems will provide the opportunity for a better understanding this critical for the nation area. The proposed conference session create a strong awareness about the importance of including the physics and technologies of various components that are needed to design and build modern electrical energy conversion systems based on solid-state power electronics. It will also emphasize the emerging wide bandgap semiconductor power switching devices in university and community college educational curricula.
The workshop was held in San Francisco in October 2013, as a track in the Electrochemical Society meeting, ECS-13. The main goal of the workshop is to invite experts in the area of power semiconductor education to present their curriculum and course modules for WBG semiconductor technology. Six experts from Northern Illinois University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin Madison, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Argonne national Laboratory were invited. The presenters presented proposals to incorporate WBG semiconductor device courses in the existing curricula for undergraduate and graduate programs. They also presented case studies showing course contents, modules, and laboratory experiments to incorporate WBG technologies in undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs. The workshop had participants from academia and industry from the US, Europe, Asia, and Japan. The participants’ feedback and their research papers enriched the experience and provided a forum for productive discussion. Outcomes that address the intellectual Merit: One of the intended outcomes of the workshop was to foster advances in the leading research on modern power electronics, using Wide Band Gap (WBG) semiconductors such as SiC and GaN. The workshop covered a large number of papers, including six papers directly related to curriculum and course modules. The rest of the papers also presented research topics on WBG semiconductors, which is directly related to education at the MS and Ph.D. levels. These papers increased the level of knowledge about the critical needs for modifying the engineering program curricula and conducting more advanced research in WBG materials, devices, and systems. The papers have shown how WBG semiconductor courses and modules can be adopted in existing programs. They addressed the need for curricula that emphasize the overall system approach. Modules and case studies from the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin Madison, and the University of Maryland, College Park were presented as a guide for others to adopt. Outcome Related to the Broader Impact The participation of a very large number of experts, from academia, industry, and national laboratories, in addition to experts and pioneers from Europe, Asia, and Japan, enriched the workshop and provided different prospective to the table. The knowledge in the papers presented in the workshop has been disseminated to audience. The participants exchanged information; gained new knowledge; learned about the experience of other institutions in curriculum development, and developed new ideas for education and research purposes. This is expected to reinforce the belief that the WBG semiconductor technology is the prescription for the power systems needs in the future. The PI was able to attract two graduate students to work on new and novel 3D SiC devices. The device performance of the developed MESFET and MOSFET has been simulated using commercial numerical analysis tools, Atlas. The two studies have been accepted for publication in the National Aerospace & Electronics Conference, Dayton OH, June 25-27, 2014. This study resulted in forming collaboration between the PI and Dr. John Shen of the Illinois Institute of Technology. During spring-14 semester, the PI included WBG semiconductor devices to the graduate courses ELE 635, Advanced Semiconductor Devices. One senior student who took this course applied for the MS degree, and will work on the fabrication of the SiC 3D devices. Dissemination of outcome The papers presented in the workshop were disseminated through the presentation to the participants and the publication in the workshop proceedings and as a review paper presented in the IEEE EIT-2014, Milwaukee WI, June 5-7-2014.
