The collaboration between Power Electronics Innovation Center (PEIC) of Turin Polytechnics and Marelli Motorsport, the Motorsport business unit of Marelli global automotive supplier, expert in the development of hybrid and electric systems for motorsport, concerns the area of gallium nitride technology (GaN) for the power electronics intended for electric motors.
The collaboration is aimed at the design and prototyping of an innovative multi-level 900-V high-power inverter for electric traction, based on GaN technology.
It is a forefront technology that can reach record switching frequencies and low switching energy, allowing a drastic reduction of passive components.
GaN technology opens new horizons in the ambit of the design of power converters, the field where the collaboration aims at excelling in terms of high-efficiency multi-level architectures, gate driving, reliable and optimized parallelization of devices, technologies of high-frequency and temperature capacitors, integration of capacitors and semiconductors on printed circuit boards aimed at the cost reduction, advanced cooling solutions.
The concept study started in 2021 and it is currently in the prototyping phase, which provides for two development stages by the end of 2022.