Faculty Affairs and Academic Programs
Jessica Boles
Engineering and Computer Science
Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences
UC Berkeley
Thin-Film Piezoelectric Resonators as Enablers of High-Efficiency, Miniaturized Power Electronics
Power electronics convert and control the electricity we use every day, serving as the backbone of renewable energy, electric transportation, computing, communications, robotics, biomedical devices, and more. The advancement of power electronics is critical to both energy sustainability and technological progress, yet power electronics tend to be bulky, lossy, and expensive. The primary bottleneck for advancing power electronics is their passive components, typically magnetics (i.e., inductors). We propose a new strategy for power conversion based on thin-film piezoelectric components that could enable future power electronics to be hundreds of times smaller and lighter than existing solutions. Compared to magnetics, piezoelectric components scale favorably to small sizes, with multiple orders of magnitude greater energy density and one order of magnitude less loss. In the proposed project, we seek to design, fabricate, and characterize the first thin-film piezoelectric resonators for use as ultra-dense passive components in power conversion. Our design approach leverages thin-film aluminum nitride, a high-performing piezoelectric material. We will design these thin-film resonators with objectives of maximizing efficiency and maximizing energy density, and we will fabricate and package them in the Marvell Nanofabrication Laboratory at UC Berkeley. Finally, we will characterize the fabricated resonators according to power conversion efficiency and density metrics. If successful, the proposed research program will demonstrate a new passive component technology capable of extreme miniaturization and efficiency improvements for power electronics.
