Ideal Power, a pioneer to develop and commercialize highly efficient and broadly patented B-TRAN™ bi-directional power switches, announced that, in collaboration with The University of Texas at Austin’s Semiconductor Power Electronics Center, it has finalized the development and fabrication of a new B-TRAN™ driver for use in its customer sampling program.
As a double-sided device with a unique architecture, B-TRAN™ requires a driver that is designed to control and coordinate the operation of both sides of the device simultaneously. The final driver design builds on the prototype driver and incorporates additional functionality and reduces the size of the original design.
It also improves B-TRAN™ switching performance through faster turn-off, resulting in significantly lower switching losses. As part of the driver development process, Ideal Power identified improvements in performance and device protection that enhance the capability of B-TRAN™. Patent protection for these inventions was filed with the US Patent Office.
“Developing, designing and fabricating this driver removes the need for potential customers to do so, facilitating their technical evaluation by presenting them with test-ready engineering prototype samples,” stated Dan Brdar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ideal Power.
“The feedback we expect to receive through our sampling effort should give us valuable input into how to best combine the driver and packaged B-TRAN™ into the intelligent power module that we plan bring to market as part of our future commercialization of B-TRAN™. We expect that offering an intelligent power module rather than a discrete device will help accelerate B-TRAN™’s eventual commercial adoption. This completed driver design is an important step toward catalyzing our B-TRAN™ vision for into reality.”
