IIT Guwahati Researchers Develop Special Semiconductor For High-Power Applications

GUWAHATI: In a significant breakthrough, a special semi-conductor has been developed by a team of researchers of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati in collaboration with a team of IIT Mandi and the Institute of Sensor and Actuator Systems, Technical University Wien.

This newly developed semi-conductor can be used in high-power applications such as electric vehicles, high-voltage transmission, traction and industry automation.

A new and affordable method for cultivating gallium oxide, an ultrawide bandgap semiconductor material, has been created by the group of researchers.

Dr Ankush Bag, Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Centre for Nanotechnology, IIT Guwahati, spearheaded this research.

As per IIT Guwahati, this semi-conductor boosts the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of power electronics used in high-power applications like electric vehicles, high-voltage transmission, traction, and industry automation and so on and so forth.

Ankush Bag emphasized the need of this research by saying that the power semi-conductor devices are the heart of every power electronic system and function primarily as efficient switches, toggling ON and OFF to condition from grid to be used by end-user.

The professor added that there is a demand for compound semi-conductor materials with an ultra-wide bandgap for emerging high-power applications.

Notably, power electronic systems are important for the regulation and direction of electrical power.

They play a pivotal role in transforming electricity from renewable sources like solar and wind, as well as non-renewable sources such as thermal power plants, into a format that the end users can use in the form of voltage, current and frequency.

The passage implies that losses are inevitable when electrical energy flows through a standard power electronic system.

Meanwhile, earlier last month, IIT Guwahati student Satyam, a Ph.D. Scholar, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, had achieved a significant milestone by winning the “Best Product Design” award under the category of water and sanitation at the prestigious Vishwakarma Awards 2023, organized by the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in partnership with Maker Bhavan Foundation and the WIN Foundation.

The competition aimed to identify and support the brightest minds in technology innovation from science and engineering colleges across India. The theme for 2023 was water and sanitation, clean technology, and smart mobility. Compared to existing water quality monitoring devices, Satyam’s device, R-SAM-PRO, is highly cost-effective and integrated with IOT.

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