Application of the PCB-Embedding Technology in Power Electronics – State of the Art and Proposed Development

The embedding of components in Printed Circuit Board (PCB) material is an attractive solution to improve the performance of power converters in the 1 W-100 kW range by increasing the power density (exploitation of unused volume in the PCB), reducing circuit parasitics (strip-line approach to current distribution, shorter interconnects), and improving manufacturability (rationalization of the manufacturing process, automation). This paper presents a review of the embedding technologies, with a special focus on power components (passive, active) and thermal mangement. The second part of the article is dedicated to the design process, and proposes a new design approach, inspired from microelectronics. The ambition is to simplify the design process by using "design toolkits". These toolkits would provide the designer with elements such as design rules, libraries or models. The objective is to enable automatic design validation, and to ensure the design can be produced directly.