Packaging and Integration and the Future of Power Electronics [White Hot]

In power electronics we often ask which drives power electronics forward: devices or topologies. My answer is that I believe devices have driven the advancement of power electronics more than topologies. Electronic control of electric power started more than a century ago with mercury arc rectifiers and magnetic amplifiers. To me it was the invention of the silicon controlled rectifier (SCR) in 1957 that ushered the modern era of power electronics. Thereafter, the control of electric power with solidstate devices continued to advance with the introduction of the bipolar power transistors in the 1960s, followed by the power MOSFET in the late 1970s, and the IGBT in the mid 1980s.