The energy landscape is rapidly changing, and it requires power distribution systems of increasing complexity to be resilient and highly reliable. Emerging technologies required to withstand these systems involve increasing converter-interfaced and time-varying renewable energy sources to electrify new sectors, such as transport and industries that challenge transmission and distribution system operators. SiC-power semiconductors have reached maturity of device fabrication and performance, making it an attractive technology for many power electronic designers. Despite their recent successful market entry, noticeable in the field of electric vehicles, several challenges related to the gate stack reliability of SiC MOSFETs still have to be tackled in order to pave the way for large scale adoption across various power electronic applications.

The Research team Semiconductors Packaging and Reliability Engineering at our Swiss Hitachi Energy Research Center is looking for an intern student to contribute at the development of an innovative test converter setup for reliability investigations. Such setup is meant to address the threshold voltage stability of SiC MOSFETs over a large number of cycling events under accelerated application and aging conditions. The target is contributed at developing a half bridge evaluation board for 3.3kV and 150A. Past projects have already developed demonstrators for 1.2kV. The position at the Hitachi Energy Research Center in Baden-Dättwil, as part of the Semiconductors and Reliability team, where state-of-the-art packaging cleanroom and close collaboration with Hitachi Energy Semiconductor factory will provide a dynamic, and supportive environment for highly motivated student to succeed in this ambitious project.

Starting: from September 2024

Location: Baden-Dättwil, Aargau, Switzerland

Internship supervisor: Edoardo Martino (edoardo.martino@hitachienergy.com)

Your responsibilities:

·       Develop and optimize a half-bridge converter for long-term dynamic testing of SiC MOSFETs.

·       Build and upgrade test electronics and data acquisition software needed to run high-precision measurements for extended test time (up to 1 year of continuous measurement)

·       Propose innovative solutions for gathering more insights from the experimental tests: creating sensors array prototypes and automated data collection software.

·       Document and communicate the solutions developed, to disseminate the gained knowledge within the research team, academic collaborators and the business unit of pertinence.

Your background:

·       Currently pursuing a M.S. degree in physics, materials engineering, electrical engineering or a related discipline (official enrolment is essential)

·       Familiar with the design and construction of electronics systems, data acquisition and automation tools

·       Experience with LabView programming, and knowledge of programming languages (eg. Matlab, Python, C)

·       Fluency in written and spoken English.

·       Good communication and technical writing skills

·       Creative and able to work autonomously