Active Capacitor

Capacitors are a key type of electronic components used almost in every electronic circuits and apparatus. The basic structure of a capacitor is with two plates made of conducting materials and an insulation layer of dielectric materials. The capacitors used in electrical energy conversion systems for power decoupling and harmonic filtering are usually bulky and reliability vulnerable. This project aims to investigate the feasibility of a fundamentally new capacitor concept that has the potential to achieve better reliability and power density compared to the existing technologies developed in the last 100 years.

Instead of using the conventional “sandwich” structure with two plates and dielectric materials, the new concept is based on semiconductors and power electronics switching circuits, which does not rely on dielectrics (e.g., electrolyte), suffered from degradation issue any more. This activity will take this paradigm shift in capacitor concepts and use a new set of methodologies to develop a high reliability, high power density and high efficient DC-link active capacitor for a 5.5 kW single-phase inverter system.