High Temperature Capacitors Prototype Project
Coming Soon Announcement
APEX OTA CONSORTIUM COMING SOON ANNOUNCEMENT
ANNOUNCEMENT: APEX-CSA-25-001
DATE: 6 November 2024
PROJECT NAME: High Temperature Capacitors Prototype Project
AUTHORITY: 10 U.S.C. §4022 (Prototype Projects)
CUSTOMER: Department of Defense
KEY TECHNICAL AREA(S): Microelectronics
DESCRIPTION
The Government seeks solutions from industry to address technical and manufacturing deficiencies for emerging high temperature, energy dense capacitor technology. Additional research and development (R&D) is required that involves physics-based modeling and simulation, the maturation of high-performance dielectric materials, capacitor device design, advanced packaging, reliability testing and assessment, and insertion of the capacitors into a military power conditioning hardware component to demonstrate the benefits and robustness of the capacitor technology while moving its technology readiness level to hardware demonstration at technology level readiness (TRL) 6 (technology demonstrated in a relevant environment).
Power electronic devices and components play a vital role in enabling the benefits of aircraft electrification. These devices and components represent fundamental technologies used in the generation, distribution, and utilization of electrical power on an aircraft and other applications, and are pervasive in electrical systems since every watt of electrical power is processed multiple times with power electronics before it is utilized.
Significant advancement in wide bandgap power semiconductors has been a driving force behind the movement to electrification. However, the full benefit of wide bandgap devices, which are commonly rated at 175 °C to 200 °C, cannot be realized until temperature improvements in this range (as well as power density improvements) are made in capacitor technologies. The goal of this prototype project is to further the technology readiness level to TRL 6 and improve the manufacturing readiness level (MRL) of capacitor technologies to offer even greater improvements in power conditioning density, efficiency, reliability, temperature range, and cost. Doing so would speed up the availability of these capacitors for insertion into critical DoD systems as well as the commercial market.
The capacitor technology of choice for power conditioning is metalized plastic films with the most common film being polypropylene, or polyphenylene ether (PPE). PPE and other plastic film capacitors are good for higher voltages, have good volumetric density (µF/in³), can be used at the frequencies required for power conversion, can handle reverse polarity, have low losses, and have high reliability due to a feature known as graceful failure.