An improved approach to application-specific power electronics education. Curriculum development

This paper presents an innovative power electronics curriculum spanning the undergraduate and graduate programs. The curriculum develops the basic concepts of the field and applies them to modern industrial challenges to solve practical problems. It is based on three fundamental disciplines: switching devices, circuits and topologies and control and drives. The curriculum, which will facilitate the development of optimal systems, bridges the gap between power semiconductor devices and circuit design. An underlying principle of the curriculum is the development of optimal application-specific power electronics systems, achieved primarily through optimization of power semiconductor devices. The curriculum is described in detail with an emphasis on the courses pertaining to power semiconductor device physics and converter circuit design. The role of advanced computer-aided design tools is also identified and shown to facilitate an application-specific device design and optimization methodology. To further illustrate the effectiveness of this approach, two industry-relevant course projects performed in the curriculum are presented in detail.