SEMI-THERM Symposium 2024

In late March 2024, I attended the SEMI-THERM symposium held at San Jose, CA. In this conference, I presented our research work on thermal modeling and testing of the Load Switch that we had built under our APRA-E GAMOW project.

The short course by Prof. Alfonso Ortega, James R. Birle Professor of Energy Technology and Mechanical and Sustainability Engineering from Villanova University, and Dr. Luca Amalfi, CEO of Seguente Inc., was refreshing. A part of the presentation that was eye-opening was the physics behind liquid cooling and the do’s and don’ts for liquid cooling systems.

Short course on Direct to Chip Liquid Cooling: Single Phase water and Two Phase Refrigerant cooling with Pumped and Passive systems
Lieven Vervecken giving a presentation about the unique qualities of the software developed by Diabetix.

It was a pleasure to meet David L. Saums, Lieven Vervecken (CEO of Diabetix), Wendy Luiten a thermal consultant, and Bob Schuch who took care of the SEMI-THERM registrations and helped with all the information I needed. During my presentation I got to meet Kiran Hota from Advanced Cooling Technologies. There were many people whom I met during the symposium, we had great discussions about thermal modeling of PCBs and cooling of Data Centers. A few other people I met included Azad Aziz from Honeywell, Yasmin Khakpour from RTX Research Center, Chau Ho who is the Principal Thermal Architect of Meta and previously at Microsoft, Intel, & Boeing Corporation, and Ajinkya Mahahjan from Smiths Interconnect.

Sangeeta Vinoth giving the presentation at the SEMI-THERM symposium
Sangeeta Vinoth giving the presentation at the SEMI-THERM symposium
Wendy Luiten receiving the THERMI AWARD

It was great to learn from Wendy Luiten on linear regression. She has won the Thermi Award for her work in various roles in Philips R&D for 30+ years. It was a delight to hear her presentation about her research on Thermal Analysis and building a Flat TV.

Another interesting lunch talk was by Sarah da Silva Andrade. She discussed on Professional Approaches to Scientific Communication and Digital Engagement.

Sarah da Silva Andrade giving a lunch talk

Additionally, there was a panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence and its implication for Thermal Engineers.

Panelists at the SEMI-THERM symposium
Sreekant Narumanchi from NREL attending the lunch talk

ARPA-E -GAMOW staff visit to Princeton Fusion Systems

We had the pleasure to welcomeARPA-Estaff Eric Carlson, Robert Ledoux, Carpenter Gene, Sam Wurzel, Guinevere Shaw (virtual), and Igor Cvetkovic (virtual) toPrinceton Fusion Systemson December 19th, 2023.

During their visit, we demonstrated our working Class-E amplifier, and Load switch with the water cooling chassis. We presented our latest Quarterly work performed in the ARPA-E GAMOW project titled “Wide-Bandgap Semiconductor Amplifiers for Plasma Heating and Control“. We had a great time of discussion, with helpful feedback for advancing and commercializing our technology!

Princeton Fusion Systems Awarded Three DOE INFUSE 2022a Grants

The Department of Energy announced the First Round of the FY 2022 Public-Private Partnership Awards to Advance Fusion Energy. The awards list contains 18 awardees. Princeton Fusion Systems, also known as Princeton Satellite Systems, received three awards:

Electron density profiles on PFRC with USPR: Ultrashort Pulse Reflectometry (USPR) is a plasma diagnostic technique that would be used on the Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration (PFRC) to measure electron density profiles. Such profile measurements provide insight into the structure of PFRC plasma and can improve our estimates of confinement time. Our University partner is University of California, Davis, PI Dr. Neville Luhmann.

Evaluating RF antenna designs for PFRC plasma heating and sustainment: We intend to analyze RF antenna performance parameters critical to the validity of robust PFRC-type fusion reactor designs. Team member University of Rochester will support TriForce simulations and contractor Plasma Theory and Computation, Inc. will support RMF code simulations. Our national lab partner is Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, PI Dr. Sam Cohen.

Stabilizing PFRC plasmas against macroscopic low frequency instabilities: This award will use the TriForce code to simulate several plasma stabilization techniques for the PFRC-2 experiment. Our lab partner is PPPL and the team again includes the University of Rochester.

These awards will help us advance PFRC technology. Contact us for more information!

TriForce model of the PFRC-1 experiment

ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Denver, CO

ARPA-E Summit held at Denver, CO.

It was exciting to meet and network with fusion industry and power electronics researchers, and influential leaders from both the private and public sectors at the Summit.

We displayed a prototype Class E amplifier, silicon carbide (SiC) JFET wafers, a PCB board of a load switch, and brochures of NREL.

Princeton Fusion Systems in collaboration with Princeton University, Qorvo, and NREL is developing integrated, power-dense, reliable, and scalable switching power amplifier boards for plasma heating and control applications. We presented the Class E prototype, some samples of the wide bandgap semiconductor silicon carbide (SiC) JFET wafers, and a PCB board for a load switch at our booth at the ARPA-E Summit. A previous post on our website has links to our marketing and technical documents.

The photos below show Stephanie Thomas and Sangeeta Vinoth at the Registration desk of the ARPA-E-2022-Summit.

The picture of the Class E prototype that the PFS presented at the booth has been added to the ARPA-E Innovation Summit website.

Class E prototype build by Princeton University

More pictures of the ARPA-E Summit can be found here.

The Summit helped us to understand the Fusion industry’s needs for power electronics. We design, test, and qualify circuit boards as building blocks for various applications: short pulses, control pulses, and RF amplifiers.

A key takeaway was that there was interest in SiC and GaN wide bandgap semiconductor requirements for high power and high frequency. Researchers asked about radiation-hardened electronics, and some were also interested in high voltage electronics.

There were talks at the Summit about climate change, rethinking solutions for resilience, reliability, and security of electric grid infrastructure, and decarbonization.