This Week in PowerBites: Spotlight on Packaging, Passives, and Hydrogen Power
What you’ll learn:
- A consortium of national labs and leading universities aims to accelerate the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries, which could help North America reduce its dependence on lithium, cobalt, and other imported materials.
- Many semiconductor companies are turning to innovative packaging technologies to improve their power devices’ electrical and thermal performance.
- A new book provides a clear-eyed analysis of the pros and cons of the hydrogen technologies being promoted as a green solution to transportation and energy storage.
- A white paper from the Linux Foundation explains how open-source software architectures and design practices can accelerate the development and optimization of AI-based energy-management systems.
Technology Features
ProductBites
This edition of ProductBites features a bumper crop of new developments in advanced packaging and dynamic development kits, along with a garnish of “smart passives.”
Dynamic Dev Kits
A pair of newly released development kits make designing wireless-charging applications and displays for solar power systems easier than ever.
Powerful Packaging
This month, advanced packaging technologies take the lead in helping power designers achieve more compact, cooler-running applications.
LRCs, Semi-Passives, and All that Jazz
Innovative inductors, smart eFuses. and virtual ideal diodes remind us that power semiconductors aren’t the only stars in the power universe.
More PowerBites
About the Author
Lee Goldberg
Contributing Editor
Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.
Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.
Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.
Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.
Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.