Gerald Weis on Embedded inductors for power converter applications

Gerald Weis studied electronic engineering at the University of Applied Sciences FH Joanneum in Kapfenberg and received his Master`s degree in 2012. From 2012 to 2017 he was employed as an R&D engineer at the university's department for electronics. In 2015 he started to work at AT&S Austria Technologie & Systemtechnik in Leoben for Advanced Packaging department. Additionally, he is lecturer for Bachelor and Master degree programs.

Embedded inductors for power converter applications

As a part of the GaNonCMOS project AT&S develops embedded inductors and builds demonstrators for Voltage Regulation Modules (VRM) based on the embedding technology. A mayor advantage is the fact that building the electrical traces around the central core using PCB production processes is more cost effective compared to winding wires manually and assembling the coil on top of a board. This advantage is multiplied when a great number of cards are distributed on a big panel format. For the evaluation of the most promising design, we did calculations. Then we simulated different designs and adapted them in iterations. We produced different demonstrators and measured them to verify the simulation and calculation data. Center Core Embedding (CCE) is a method for the build of the embedded buildups. We adapted this process for the production of embedded inductors. In addition, there is the opportunity to embed other components like switches, controllers and passives into the same package, forming a fully embedded converter.