PRISME · PRogram for ISolation Manufacturing in Europe (PRISME)

PRogram for ISolation Manufacturing in Europe (PRISME)

The aim of the PRISME project is to enable the next ‘Electrical’ revolution by developing isolation technology that protects people and equipment from high voltages (HV). This will be delivered by combining innovations in isolation materials and device design to meet higher voltage requirements. Novel test structures and protocols will be designed to enable rapid characterisation to ensure reliable lifetime operation of these materials and devices in HV applications. Electric Vehicles (EV’s) have gained increased popularity in recent years as consumers look for alternative fuel vehicles to conserve energy and reduce CO2 emissions and Governments work to meet UN Sustainable Development Goal 13 to combat climate change and its impacts. The Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe (COM (2011) 571) outlines how we can transform Europe's economy into a sustainable one by 2050 and one of the key aspects is sustainable transport. Electric motors are more energy efficient than conventional combustion engines, and they can dramatically reduce emissions. As the voltage of EV battery packs increases, downstream system and component suppliers must meet the safety and performance challenges in these high power conversion applications. While batteries are at the heart of EVs, they are also the source of many barriers to adopting EVs because of reliability, safety, weight and cost. To increase the battery efficiency high voltages are needed and this poses two major challenges: 1. Signal isolation – transmitting high voltage signals to low power electronics to monitor safe operation, 2. Power isolation – protecting people and hardware from HV. PRISME will focus on isolation technology achieved by physical separation of two metal coils by high performance insulating polymer: polyimide (PI). PI layer is an electrical insulator widely used in microelectronics due to its excellent electrical properties and ease of processing. Its high breakdown electric field (>400V/um) makes it particularly suitable as an insulating material for digital isolators. This work aims to show how the PI electrical isolation performance is significantly enhanced by introducing thin PECVD silicon nitride (SiN) layers at the PI-electrode interface. Insight into the physical origins of these improvements is obtained by careful wafer-level characterizations and product-level aging tests. The two critical developments required to deliver the next generation isolation technology are: 1. New aging methods to accelerate isolation technology reliability validation 2. New advanced materials that meet the breakdown requirements for higher voltage isolation.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union