Achieving the global goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 requires a fundamental change in electronic materials to create a more reliable and sustainable power grid. A diamond can be a girl's best friend, but it can also be the solution needed for supporting the electrification of society necessary to achieve carbon neutrality in the next 30 years. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a semiconductor device made using diamond that has the highest breakdown voltage and lowest leakage current compared to previously reported diamond devices. Such a device would provide the more efficient technologies needed during the world's transition to renewable energy sources.
It is estimated that 50% of the world's electricity is currently controlled by power devices, and this number is expected to increase to 80% in less than ten years, while electricity demand will increase by 50% by 2050.
According to the new reportfrom the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine: “Perhaps the greatest technological danger to a successful energy transition is the risk that a nation will fail to deploy, modernize, and build an electric grid. Without increased capacity, the deployment of renewables will be delayed, and the net result could be at least a temporary increase in fossil fuel emissions, preventing the nation from meeting its emissions reduction goals.”
“To achieve this electricity. requirements and the modernization of the electrical grid, it is critical that we move away from conventional materials such as silicon to the new materials we see being used today such as silicon carbide and the next generation of semiconductors – ultra-wide bandgap materials – such as nitride aluminum, diamond and related compounds," says the professor of electrical engineering and computer engineering Jan Bayram, who led this study, along with graduate student Juoran Khan. The results of this work was published in IEEE Electron Device Letters.
Beyond silicon
Most semiconductors are built using silicon and currently meet society's electricity needs. But as Byram points out, “we want to make sure we have enough resources for everyone as our needs evolve. Now we're using more and more bandwidth, we're creating more data (which also means more storage), and we're using more energy, more electricity, and more energy in general. The question is, is there a way to make all of this more efficient, rather than producing more energy and building more power plants?'
Why a diamond?
Diamond is an ultra-wideband semiconductor with the highest thermal conductivity, i.e. the material's ability to transfer heat. Due to these properties, diamond semiconductor devices can operate at much higher voltages and currents (with less material) and still dissipate heat without causing a reduction in electrical performance compared to traditional semiconductor materials such as silicon. “To have a power grid that requires high current and high voltage, making everything more efficient for applications like solar panels and wind turbines, then we need a technology that doesn't have thermal limitations. This is where the diamond appears," says Bayram.
Although many people associate diamond with expensive jewelry, diamond can be made more affordable and environmentally friendly in the lab, making it a viable and important alternative to semiconductors. Natural diamond is formed deep beneath the Earth's surface under immense pressure and heat, but because it is essentially only carbon, which is abundant, man-made diamond can be produced in weeks rather than billions of years, and can also be produced in 100 times less carbon emissions.
In this paper, Byram and Khan show that their diamond device can withstand high voltages, around 5 kV, although the voltage was limited by the measurement setup and not by the device itself. Theoretically, the device can withstand up to 9 kV. This is the highest voltage recorded for a diamond device. In addition to the highest breakdown voltage, the device also exhibits the lowest leakage current, which can be imagined as a flowing tap, but with energy. Leakage current affects the overall efficiency and reliability of the device.
Han says, “We have created an electronic device that is better suited for high power, high voltage applications for the future electric grid and other energy applications. And we built this device based on an ultra-wideband material, synthetic diamond, which promises better efficiency and performance than current-generation devices. We hope to continue to optimize this device and other configurations so that we can approach the performance limits of the material potential of diamond.”
Source: electronicproducts.com
