Academic Awards 2025 booklet

19 Design and Implementation of a Planar Coupled Inductor for GaN-based Ćuk Converters Power electronics is the invisible backbone of modern energy systems — crucial, yet often overlooked. My project tackles one of its most pressing challenges: making converters smaller and more efficient by eliminating bulky passive components. This research proposes a new method for designing coupled inductors that achieves near-zero current ripple on one winding. Using physical modeling and a clever magnetic structure, we demonstrate how ripple cancellation can drastically reduce the need for large inductors and capacitors. The result is a compact, planar magnetic structure, suitable for integration into PCBs and optimized for high-frequency GaN-based converters. By steering ripple from one winding to the other, the system avoids large filter elements, cuts losses, and enables modular multilevel designs. The impact? Smaller, lighter converters for everything from mobile devices to renewable energy systems — all while improving thermal behavior and efficiency. We move closer to a future where power electronics simply vanish into the background — doing more with less. -2 -1 0 1 2 10 -5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1 0 1 2 10 -5 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 Figure 2: Thermal image of the implemented planar coupled inductor operating under nominal conditions. The structure shows excellent thermal behavior with a peak temperature of only 38°C, validating the design’s efficiency and suitability for compact, high-frequency applications. Figure 3: Visual comparison of a conventional bulky inductor setup (left) versus the compact planar coupled inductor developed in this project (right). The size reduction illustrates the major space-saving advantage achieved through Inductor coupling and PCB integration. Figure 1: Measured primary and secondary inductor current in the Ćuk converter with ripple cancellation active. The secondary ripple is significantly suppressed, demonstrating the effectiveness of the coupled inductor design in steering ripple away from the secondary winding.

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