Hybrid Pseudo-Resonant Switched-Capacitor Drive Circuits for Electrostatic Micro-mechanical Actuators

用于静电微机械致动器的混合伪谐振开关电容器驱动电路

基本信息

批准号：
2216552
负责人：
Jason Stauth
金额：
$ 39.36万
依托单位：
Dartmouth College
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2022-08-15 至 2025-07-31
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2216552&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Hybrid Pseudo Resonant Switched Capacitor

项目摘要

Recent decades have seen the growth and proliferation of a variety of low-power, small-size electronic devices for portable consumer, industrial, and medical applications. In many cases these platforms desire electromechanical interfaces for sensors and actuators, mechanized control, robotics, and human-machine interfaces. New electrostatic (electric-field-driven) micro-electromechanical actuators including piezoelectric devices, silicon MEMs, and dielectric elastomers show significant potential to overcome the severe size and weight limitations of conventional magnetic-based electric motors. However, these technologies require new design paradigms for the associated electronic interfaces, which must provide high driving voltages (typically 100’s of volts to low kV) while boosting from low-voltage (single-digit volt range) supplies, and must remain efficient at small size (~1cm3) and weight (~1g). A unique consideration is that electrostatic devices present as dominantly capacitive in most scenarios. Therefore key challenges include providing high-voltage bidirectional DC-DC conversion at extremely small size, while efficiently delivering (and recovering) reactive power at drive frequencies in a Hz-kHz range. Addressing these challenges could have impacts in diverse industry sectors from medical and biomedical devices, microfluidics, imaging, optics and communications, ultrasound, and haptic tactile interfaces.This project will involve the exploration, design, and integration of efficient, high-voltage, mm-scale drive electronics for electrostatic micro-mechanical actuators. A new hybrid pseudo-resonant architecture will be developed that merges a reconfigurable series-parallel switched capacitor (SC) converter with a low-voltage bidirectional inductor-based DC-DC converter. The hybrid approach merges the advantages of pure SC and inductor-based topologies while providing capabilities to recover (recycle) energy stored in the actuator bulk dielectric. The intellectual merit of the proposal includes circuit techniques, control, and communication concepts that can provide significant advantages – extending the voltage conversion range, providing stable regulation, eliminating design tradeoffs, and reducing overall power loss by over an order of magnitude compared to conventional architectures. The project will include the study of architecture details including optimal segmentation of current, voltage, and power ratings of the respective portions of the hybrid converter to maximize performance at total size 100mm3 and weight 100mg. A new, highly-scalable, level-shifting strategy will be developed to enable chip-chip series stacking, allowing drive voltages well in excess of the semiconductor buried-oxide (BOX) breakdown limit. An integrated circuit (IC) prototype will be designed a 300V SOI CMOS process to demonstrate high-voltage operation, actuator energy recovery, and chip-chip stacking to low-kV drive voltages from 1.7-4.2 V supplies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

近几十年来，为便携式消费者，工业和医疗应用提供了各种低功率，小型电子设备的增长和扩散。在许多情况下，这些平台希望具有机电界面，用于传感器和执行器，机械化控制，机器人技术和人机接口。新的静电（电场驱动的）微电动执行器，包括压电设备，硅MEMS和DIEELECTRICRICT弹性体，具有克服常规磁性电动机的严重尺寸和重量限制的巨大潜力。但是，这些技术需要针对相关的电子界面进行新的设计范例，这些界面必须提供高驱动电压（通常为100伏至低kV），同时从低压（单位伏特范围）供应提高，并且必须保持小尺寸（〜1cm3）和重量（〜1g）的效率。一个独特的考虑因素是，在大多数情况下，静电设备都具有主要电容性。因此，关键挑战包括以极小的尺寸提供高压双向DC-DC转换，同时在HZ-KHz范围内有效地传递（并恢复）反应能力。解决这些挑战可能会影响来自医疗和生物医学设备，微流体，成像，光学和通信，超声和Hattic触觉接口的领域的影响。此项目将纯SC的优势和诱导的拓扑功能融合在一起，同时提供恢复的能力。（回收）存储在执行器批量词典中的能量。该提案的智力优点包括电路技术，控制和通信概念，这些概念可以提供显着优势 - 扩展电压转换范围，提供稳定的调节，消除设计权衡以及与传统体系结构相比，通过超过一定的数量级来减少总体功率损失。该项目将包括架构详细信息的研究，包括对混合动力转换器各个部分的电流，电压和功率等级的最佳分割，以最大程度地提高总尺寸100mm3和重量100mg的性能。将制定一种新的，高度的级别转移策略，以实现芯片芯片系列堆叠，从而使驱动电压远远超过了半导体内置氧化物（框）分解限制。将设计一个300V SOI CMOS工艺的集成电路（IC）原型，以证明高压操作，执行能量回收和芯片芯片堆栈，从1.7-4.2 V供应提供低kV驱动电压。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估了基金会的范围来诚实地对其进行评估，并通过评估了基金会的范围。