Competition winners honoured at CPSS awards ceremony

The annual contest challenges top engineering teams from China’s universities to design new or improved power electronics systems using GaN power transistors from design to build that meets specified requirements.

This year’s challenge was to develop a high efficiency, high power density AC/DC power supply for data centre server power applications with GaN Systems’ 650V power transistors.

The design had to meet several requirements: 400W rated output power, 220 VAC input voltage range/48 DC output voltage, and achieve 94% efficiency at 50% load and greater than 3W/cm3 power density.

Forty teams participated in the first round of the competition, 30 teams moved on to the second round, and 12 participated in the final competition. Five engineering teams were awarded for their GaN-based inverter designs.

Cash awards of 20,000-yuan, 10,000 yuan, and 5,000 yuan were given to the top, first, and second winning teams:

Top winner:

• Zhejiang University

First:

• Huazhong University of Science and Technology
• North China University of Technology

Second:

• Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology

Honorable mentions go to:

• Chongqing University of Technology
• Hangzhou University of Electronic Science and Technology
• Harbin Institute of Technology
• Kunming University of Science and Technology
• Shanghai Maritime University
• Tsinghua University
• Yanshan University 

The top winning team from Zhejiang University designed a solution that had a 3.76W/cm3 power density with 93.8% efficiency. Designs were judged on meeting the design criteria, functionality during the test day, ingenuity, and quality of presentation. 

“Congratulations to the winning teams and to all those that participated in the challenge,” said Paul Wiener, Vice President, Strategic Marketing for GaN Systems. “The ‘GaN Systems Cup’ continues to provide engineering students practical experience leveraging the benefits of GaN to address today’s high efficiency, high power needs.”