The sale of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) has increased tenfold from the year 2001 to 2009 [1]. With this the demand for high temperature electronics has also increased dramatically making, high temperature electronics for HEV applications desirable in the engine compartment, power train, and brakes where the ambient temperature normally exceeds 150°C. Power converters (i.e. DC-DC converter, DC-AC inverter) inside the HEVs require gate drivers to control the power switches. An integrated gate driver circuit has been realized in 0.8-um BCD-on-SOI process. This gate driver IC needs a step-down voltage regulator to convert the unregulated high input DC voltage (VDDH) to a regulated nominal CMOS voltage (i.e. 5 V). This step-down voltage regulator will supply voltage to the low-side buffer (pre-driver) and other digital and analog circuits inside the gate driver ICs. A linear voltage regulator is employed to accomplish this task; however, very few publications on high temperature voltage regulators are available. This research presents a high temperature linear voltage regulator designed and fabricated in a commercially available 0.8-um BCD-on-SOI process. SOI processes typically offer reduced junction leakage current by three orders of magnitude compared to the bulk-CMOS processes at temperatures beyond 150°C. In addition, a pole swap compensation technique is utilized to achieve stability over a wide range (four decades) of load current. The error amplifier inside the regulator is designed using an inversion coefficient based design methodology, and a temperature stable current reference is used to bias the error amplifier. The linear regulator provides an output voltage of 5.3 V at room temperature and can supply a maximum load current of 200 mA.

Developments in automotive (particularly hybrid electric vehicles), aerospace, and energy production industries over the recent years have led to expanding research interest in integrated circuit (IC) design toward high-temperature applications. A high-voltage, high-temperature SOI process allows for circuit design to expand into these extreme environment applications. Nearly all electronic devices require a reliable supply voltage capable of operating under various input voltages and load currents. These input voltages and load currents can be either DC or time-varying signals. In this work, a stable supply voltage for embedded circuit functions is generated on chip via a voltage regulator circuit producing a stable 5-V output voltage. Although applications of this voltage regulator are not limited to gate driver circuits, this regulator was developed to meet the demands of a gate driver IC. The voltage regulator must provide reliable output voltage over an input range from 10 V to 30 V, a temperature range of −50 ºC to 200 ºC, and output loads from 0 mA to 200 mA. Additionally, low power stand-by operation is provided to help reduce heat generation and thus lower operating junction temperature. This regulator is based on the LM723 Zener reference voltage regulator which allows stable performance over temperature (provided proper design of the temperature compensation scheme). This circuit topology and the SOI silicon process allow for reliable operation under all application demands. The designed voltage regulator has been successfully tested from −50 ºC to 200 ºC while demonstrating an output voltage variation of less than 25 mV under the full range of input voltage. Line regulation tests from 10 V to 35 V show a 3.7-ppm/V supply sensitivity. With the use of a high-temperature ceramic output capacitor, a 5-nsec edge, 0 to 220 mA, 1-µsec pulse width load current induced only a 55 mV drop in regulator output voltage. In the targeted application, load current pulse widths will be much shorter, thereby improving the load transient performance. Full temperature and input voltage range tests reveal the no-load supply current draw is within 330 µA while still providing an excess of 200 mA of load current upon demand.

Production and consumption of electricity have grown enormously during the last century. No mater what the primary source of energy is, almost all generation of electricity comes from conversion of a rotational movement in a generator. The aim of this thesis is to see how high voltage technology influence production and storage of electricity. Power flow in the generators used to convert mechanical movement to electric energy is analyzed using Poynting‘s vector. The impact of new generator technology for efficient extraction of hydroelectric power is shown. Simulation of a large permanent magnet turbo generator is presented. A flywheel storage system for electric vehicles utilizing high voltage technology is also presented. In pulsed power applications, a cheap method for intermediate storage of energy during milliseconds, which enables an inductive primary storage is presented and experimentally tested.

This paper studies the possibility of building a modular multilevel converter (M2C) using silicon carbide (SiC) switches. The main focus is on a theoretical investigation of the conduction losses of such a converter and a comparison to a corresponding converter with silicon-insulated gate bipolar transistors. Both SiC BJTs and JFETs are considered and compared in order to choose the most suitable technology. One of the submodules of a down-scaled 3 kVA prototype M2C is replaced with a submodule with SiC JFETs without antiparallel diodes. It is shown that the diode-less operation is possible with the JFETs conducting in the negative direction, leaving the possibility to use the body diode during the switching transients. Experimental waveforms for the SiC submodule verify the feasibility during normal steady-state operation. The loss estimation shows that a 300 MW M2C for high-voltage direct current transmission would potentially have an efficiency of approximately 99.8% if equipped with future 3.3 kV 1.2 kA SiC JFETs. / © 2011 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.QC 20111220

The capacitor test process at ABB Capacitors in Ludvika must be improved to meet future demands for high voltage products. To find a solution to how to improve the test process, an investigation was performed to establish which parts of the process are used and how they operate. Several parts which can improves the process were identified. One of them was selected to be improved in correlation with the subject, mechanical engineering. Four concepts were generated and decision matrixes were used to systematically select the best concept. By improving the process several benefits has been added to the process. More units are able to be tested and lead time is reduced. As the lead time is reduced the cost for each unit is reduced, workers will work less hours for the same amount of tested units, future work to further improve the process is also identified. The selected concept was concept 1, the sway stop concept. This concept is used to reduce the sway of the capacitors as they have entered the test facility, the box. By improving this part of the test process a time saving of 20 seconds per unit can be achieved, equivalent to 7% time reduction. This can be compared to an additional 1400 units each year.

This thesis details the design and development of a solid-state, high power modulator for driving plasma ion implantation systems. A plurality of modulators can be stacked in a Marx geometry to allow complete voltage (implantation energy) scalability. Unlike a classic Marx modulator, the design employs actively controlled charging and discharging paths. This allows maximum modulation flexibility and efficiency. A hybrid Marx bank - pulse transformer configuration was commissioned in a 20keV 12A plasma ion implantation system for the purpose of photonics research. <p>The design portion of this work is accompanied by an investigation, extension and discretization of the Lieberman analytical model of plasma ion implantation dynamics. The model predicts final implantation concentrations as well as system operational limits in specific plasma conditions. A new extension to the model accounts for subtle time-of-flight effects on accelerating ions. Agreement between modeled and measured ion currents is good.<p>Finally, a collection of material processing experiments conducted with the plasma ion implantation system since its inauguration in February 2006 is briefly presented. In it, a new silicon-based light emitting diode is introduced.

Pulsed power generators are a key component in compact systems for generation of high-power microwaves (HPM). HPM generation by virtual cathode devices such as Vircators put high demands on the source. The rise time and the pulse length of the source voltage are two key issues in the generation of HPM radiation. This thesis describes the construction and tests of several inductive high power pulse generators. The pulse generators were designed with the intent to deliver a pulse with fast rise time and rectangular voltage. Therefore, the pulse generators are all based on discharges of transmission lines. The transmission lines used in the pulse generators are modern high voltage cables normally used in power transmission. All tested pulse generators have step up transformers as intermediate magnetic energy storage. Further, the pulse generators have contributed to the knowledge of compact designs. Closing switches is another important device in pulse generator architectures. In general, high power switching involving large currents and high voltages requires the use of robust switches. The switches used in the pulse generators of this thesis are of gas and liquid type.

The task for this Master thesis was to evaluate different black-box arc models for circuit-breakers with the purpose of finding criteria for the breaking ability. A black-box model is a model that requires no knowledge from the user of the underlying physical processes. Black-box arc models have been used in circuit-breaker development for many years. Arc voltages from tests made in the High Power Laboratory in Ludvika were used for validation, along with the resistance calculated at current zero, R0, and 500 ns before current zero, R500. Three different arc models were evaluated: Cassie-Mayr, KEMA and an arc model based on power calculations. The third model gave very good results and if the model is developed further, the breaking ability could easily be estimated. The arc model based on power calculations could be improved by using better approximations of the quantities in the model, and by representing the current better. A further suggestion for the following work is to combine the second arc model tested, the KEMA model, with the model based on power calculations in order to estimate the KEMA model parameters. The R0 and R500 values should also be calculated from more tests, in order to find a clear limit of the breaking ability.

Nanofibres have been the subject of recent intensive research due to their unique properties, especially their large surface-area-to-volume ratio, which is about one thousand times higher than that of a human hair. They also have several other remarkable characteristics, such as flexibility in surface functionality, superior mechanical properties such as stiffness and tensile strength, their capacity to be formed into a variety of shapes, and the fact that they can be produced from a wide range of organic and inorganic polymers. These outstanding properties make polymer nanofibres the optimal candidates for providing significant improvement in current technology and for opening the door to novel applications in many research areas. Electrospinning is a straightforward and inexpensive process that produces continuous nanofibres from submicron diameters down to nanometre diameters. Many researchers have successfully electrospun a variety of polymer solutions into nanofibres. However, electrospinning any polymer solution directly is not straightforward or simple because of the number of parameters that influence the electrospinning process. The characteristics of the electrospun jet and the morphology of the resultant fibres are highly dependent on the properties of the polymer solution. In addition, what are favourable processing conditions for one polymer solution may not be suitable for another solution. A literature review revealed that there is no clear understanding of the behaviour of the electrospun jet and the way in which fibre morphology varies with variations in influential parameters. In addition, reported results contain significant inconsistencies and very little research has examined the effects of electrical parameters such as the electric field, the polarity of the electrode, and the conductivity and permittivity of the solution. Furthermore, no research has been conducted with respect to optimizing the electrospinning process. In this thesis, a comprehensive study was carried out by giving a special attention to the effects of electric field that have not been thoroughly investigated in the past. The electric field between the needle tip and the collector plate was altered by varying the applied voltage, distance between the needle tip and the collector plate, the inner diameter of the needle, and polarity of the voltage. Based on the experimental work, it was found that the behavior of Taylor cone, the length of the straight jet portion, and whipping jet region is highly influenced by the distribution of the electric field between the needle tip and the collector plate. Based on the stability of the Taylor cone, it was concluded that the stable operating region of the electrospun jet is a very narrow region and it is between 0.9 – 1.1kV/mm for the range of experiments that were carried out in this study. The length of the straight jet portion of the electrospun jet shows a linear relationship to the applied electric field at the tip of the fluid droplet and the whipping jet region is influenced by both the electric field at the tip of the fluid droplet and the distance between the needle and the collector plate. A confirmation were made that there must be enough distance between the needle tip and the collector plate (>200mm) to operate over the complete range of voltages without affecting drying of nanofibres. It was also concluded that the morphology and diameter of the collected nanofibres depend significantly on both the length of the straight jet portion and size of the whipping region. The effects of polarity of the applied voltage on the electrospinning process and nanofibre morphology were investigated using the positive, negative, and AC voltages. However, it was found that the electrospinning can not be achieved with the application of 60Hz AC voltage. It was observed that the behavior of Taylor cone, the straight jet portion, and the whipping jet region depend on the polarity of the applied voltage. During the study, it was accomplished that the reason for this different behavior is the disparity of ionization in the polymer solution with the application of positive and negative high voltages. In this thesis, the effects of multi-needle arrangements on the electrospinning process and fibre morphology were also explained. Finite element method (FEM) simulation results revealed that the local electric field strength around each needle tip weakens significantly in the case of multi-needle schemes due to the mutual influence of other needles in the arrangement compared to the single-needle system. The spacing between the needles was varied, and the effects of the needle spacing were examined. The experimental and simulation results were concealed the correlation between the degree of field distortion and the variation in the measured vertical angle of the straight jet portion for different needle spacing. It was concluded that the local field deterioration at the needle tips in multi-needle schemes degrades the electrospinning process significantly and produces considerable variation in the fibre morphology even though the influence of needle spacing on the average jet current and the fibre diameter are not very significant. In this work, the effects of conductivity and ionic carriers on the process of electrospinning and hence on the morphology of nanofibres were studied using polyethylene oxide (PEO) and polyacrylic acid (PAA) aqueous solutions. Different salts including lithium chloride (LiCl), sodium chloride (NaCl), sodium fluoride (NaF), sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3), potassium chloride (KCl), and cesium chloride (CsCl) were added in different concentrations to the polymer solutions for introducing different ionic carriers into the solution. The results showed that the average fiber diameter decreases with increase in the conductivity of the solution. In addition, it was discovered that the formation of Taylor cone highly depends on the conductivity in the polymer solution. Formation of multi-jets at the fluid droplet when the conductivity of the polymer solution is increased during the electrospinning was also observed. These behaviors were completely explained using the distribution of the surface charge around the electrospun jet and the variation in the tangential electric field along the surface of the fluid droplet. The stretching of the polymer jet can be related to the amount of ionic carries and the size and mobility of positive and negative ions. The increasing amount of ionic carriers and smaller size positive ions enhance the stretching of the electrospun jet. In contrast, the lesser diameter negative ions decrease the stretching of the electrospun jet. The morphology of electrospun nanofibres can also be varied by altering the type of ionic carriers. A charge modifier, which is a container that is used to hold a solvent surrounding the needle tip during the electrospinning, was introduced to facilitate the electrospinning of insulating and high conductivity polymer solutions. The co-axial flow of the filled solvent on the outer surface of the polymer solution helps to induce enough surface charges during electrospinning and it also keeps the electric field tangential to the fluid surface during the process. Therefore, the introduction of charge modifier greatly enhanced the electrospinning behavior of highly insulating and conductive polymer solutions and liquids. The developed charge modifier method was verified by using sodium alginate which is a biopolymer that cannot electrospin alone due to its high electrical conductivity and silicone rubber which is an insulating liquid polymer at room temperature. One of the most commonly used theoretical model of the electrospinning process was modified to incorporate the non-uniform characteristics of the electric field at the tip of the needle. The non-uniform electric field between the needle tip (spinneret) and the collector plate was calculated based on the charge simulation technique (CST). It gives a better representation of the true electrospinning environment compared to the uniform field calculation in the existing model. In addition, a localized approximation was used to calculate the bending electric force acting on the electrospinning jet segments. It was also introduced a constant velocity to initiate the electrospinning jet during simulation. The incorporated modifications gave better results that closely match with the real electrospinning jet. The modified electrospinning model was used to understand the effects of parameters on the electrospinning process and fibre morphology.

Pulsed electric field (PEF) processing has been demonstrated to be an effective non-thermal pasteurization method for food-treatment applications. With this method, high voltage, short-duration pulses are applied to a chamber through which liquid food is passed. If the voltage applied and the corresponding electric field develops a potential higher than a critical trans-membrane potential, the pores expand, and the membrane of the living cell is ruptured. Due to the lower amount of energy consumed during a PEF process, the temperature of the liquid is kept much lower than as opposed to conventional pasteurization. The PEF method thus kills bacteria and other microorganisms while preserving the nutrition and taste of the liquid foods. Although the parameter responsible for inactivation is the voltage applied, for any given voltage, the conductivity of the liquid defines a current through the liquid that causes the temperature to rise. Therefore, preventing excessive heating of the liquid requires the application of an efficient waveform. According to the literature, the most efficient waveform is a square wave since the entire energy applied would be used for the inactivation process. Although some power supplies are capable of generating such a waveform, the generation of an efficient waveform that satisfies all the requirements for producing a viable product for PEF applications is still a challenging problem. In this research, a cascadable pulse generator, based on a Marx generator design, was designed and implemented in order to generate a pulsed waveform for the treatment of liquid food. IGBT switches were used to charge capacitors in parallel and to discharge them in series as a means of generating a high voltage at the output. The design was implemented and tested for two stages, generating up to 6 kV and 1.6 kA square pulses with a controllable pulse width from 1 µs to 10 µs. Up to 3 switches were connected in parallel to enhance the current capability of the system. Also investigated are ways to improve the transient time by enhancing the IGBT driver circuit. The effect of design parameters such as pulse width, voltage, and current on the temperature rise in the liquid was also studied. A variety of liquid foods with different conductivities were tested in order to confirm the functionality of the system.