IQE (Europe) Limited Public Funding

Under their “Gone Green” deployment scenario, National Grid forecast that energy generated from photovoltaics (PV) in the UK is expected to rise from 2 to 15 GW over the next 20 years. This is being driven by the UK’s legal obligations around installing renewable energy sources & cutting greenhouse gases, the rising cost of energy & concerns around the security of supply – the so-called energy “trilemma”. Power electronic converters are a key enabling technology for PV and other low-carbon technologies (LCTs). However the use of LCTs has resulted in problems for the electrical distribution nerwork such as supply voltage distortion and over- voltages, which threaten to limit or delay their uptake. This project aims to mitigate this threat by exploiting the benefits of a new Gallium Nitride power transistor module, which will be developed for use in a hybrid PV- battery unit for residential applications, but will have much broader applications e.g. electric vehicle charging & micro-CHP. These units will be much smaller, lighter & have lower cost than existing Silicon based units and their deployment will lead to an increase in the maximum allowable installed capacity on the network.

The Little Owl is an industry led project to research into a novel method of 'clean' efficient propulsion for an unmanned air system with associated technologies to facilitate extended time-on-station and long endurance.

Awaiting Public Project Summary

To advance GaN RF devices by optimizing the electrical and structural characteristics of the epitaxy process to improve the device energy efficiency, performance and yield.

Gallium Nitride (GaN) is being grown on Silicon substrates by the semiconductor manufactures to create discrete devices for high-voltage power electronics applications, with the potential to deliver superior performance in breakdown voltage, on-state resistance and higher switching speeds, reducing system losses and enabling greater levels of efficiency at lower cost than current solutions. The PEARGaN project has assembled a consortium of world class partners from UK industry and academia, to develop new system level concepts and circuit architectures, evaluate advanced manufacturing process technologies and create device demonstrators to fully understand the device behaviour and failure mechanisms, proving that these devices are robust and can deliver the required levels of life-time reliability that is demanded by the early adopters in a broad range of power management and control applications.

Awaiting Public Project Summary