Soft Magnetic Material to Transform Next-Gen Power Conversion
Sandia National Laboratories have developed the world's first commercially available iron nitride soft magnetic component. See how this leading-edge soft magnetic (and manufacturing-ready) material may transform the future of power conversion.
Sandia National Labs and co-developers at the University of California, Irvine, won an R&D 100 award for Iron Nitride Soft Magnetics — learn more .
Transcript
00:00:00 [Music] sandia has a long history in working power electronics and we also have a history in working in semiconductors and we knew there was a critical gap in power electronics where magnetics were not being addressed and we knew that we wanted to address the storage by making new soft magnetic materials so what people do normally as they
00:00:31 when they're designing these high frequency power conversion system is they take off the shelf units and it's an afterthought but you need a much better approach a much more holistic approach to designing the system and this is exactly what this advanced magnetic project does we have to go beyond the traditional materials
00:00:52 utilizing either silicon or just off the shelf magnetic materials to perform the power conversion system so we're looking at alternative systems utilizing white band gap devices uh silicon carbide gallium nitride or advanced capacitors and in this case advanced magnetics these new materials allow for a much
00:01:14 higher density design much more efficient and more compatible with with what you see out there so the next generation of these systems are going to be a lot more high performing part conversion system with utilizing advanced materials internally to that and the key part of
00:01:32 that as you increase the switching frequency of power conversion system they get smaller however as you increase the power conversion switching frequency things heat up and especially if you're using white bank app devices you need not only the white band gap device to be operated at
00:01:49 a higher temperature also the magnetic needs to be at higher temperatures the traditional materials cannot operate up much at these temperatures greater than 150 degrees c or so and that's why we need this particular new design this new design for for advanced power conversion system it's a new south magnetic material called iron nitride
00:02:11 stoichiometry is fe4n it's made of only iron and nitrogen so it's a very low cost material can be used in power electronics as an inductor can be used inside a transformer can be used inside electric motors and electric generators it can be produced using something called spark plugs and centering which allows us to do something called net shaping
00:02:33 where we eliminate the need to machine any part after fabrication also our material has very high magnetization which leads to very high power densities very small volumes very low mass in the soft magnetic part the material also has a very high resistivity which allows us to mitigate eddy current losses and to be very efficient electrically efficient that is
00:02:56 if these new magnetics are incorporated into newer advanced design it can transform many types of circuits including electric vehicles including renewable energy including distributed energy resources like battery energy storage for the grid it just makes that a much more efficient device than what we had before so typically for materials that we use today
00:03:21 they're limited with its capability but with new materials like this magnetic device it will completely transform the overall system and hire much higher density design and higher frequency and much more performing product conversion system we can influence energy efficiency globally in
00:03:41 electric distribution in transportation and in all sorts of sectors that use energy it is the world's first commercially available iron nitride soft material that could be developed today and it could transform the next generation of power conversion system around the world