Alberto Castellazzi
Professor, Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering
- alberto.castellazzi
- Areas of Research
- Power Electronics, Power Semiconductor Devices, Packaging, Thermal Management
- Profile
- Research
-
Dr. Alberto Castellazzi is a professor at KUAS Faculty of Engineering. He leads research and teaching in advanced solid-state power processing, including the characterization and use of wide-band-gap (WBG) semiconductor devices (silicon carbide, SiC; gallium nitride, GaN), their packaging and thermal management, to yield disruptive joint progress in efficiency, power density and reliability of power converters.
Dr. Castellazzi earned a Laurea degree in Physics from the University of Milan, Italy in 1998, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the Munich University of Technology (TU Munich), Germany in 2004. He has been involved in power electronics research and development for over 20 years, with affiliation and working experience in both industry and academia, including SIEMENS Corporate Technology (Germany), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), ALSTOM Transport (France) and the University of Nottingham (UK).
Dr. Castellazzi has published over 200 papers in specialist international journals and conference proceedings and has held a number of invited talks, tutorials and seminars on the topic of WBG power devices and SiC-based electrical power conversion. He is active as both a reviewer and editor and is a member of the technical program committee of a number of international conferences on power electronics and power semiconductor devices.
Dr. Castellazzi is a member of the Power Electronic Conversion Technology Annex (PECTA) of the International Energy Agency (IEA) (more info at: https://pecta.iea-4e.org/).
-
Integrated Technologies for the Energy Internet Era
The evolution of electrical energy conversion technologies is dependent upon three main parameters: efficiency, power density and reliability. The engineering solutions enabling their joint optimization have consistently been adopted through a process of natural selection.
Future developments largely rely on the use of solid-state devices operating at increasingly higher frequencies and temperatures. Presently, a new class of semiconductor materials, so-called “wide-band-gap” (silicon-carbide, SiC; gallium-nitride, GaN; gallium-oxide, Ga2O3) materials, is replacing silicon in a number of pivotal domains of our societal infrastructure, such as energy, transportation and industrial applications. At the same time, these materials are also underpinning the development of novel smarter scenarios, summarily referred to as the “Energy Internet”. Full exploitation of the superior features and disruptive potential of wide-band-gap technologies will depend upon the availability of bespoke solutions for their packaging, assembly and operation. The Solid-State Power Processing Laboratory (SP2-Lab) at KUAS Faculty of Engineering is working at the forefront of these developments and, relying on state-of-the-art experimental equipment and computer-aided-design tools, has already produced noteworthy reference results regarding the robust deployment of these solutions.
While the physics and operation of the semiconductors themselves is determined on micro- to milli-metric feature sizes and micro- to milli-second timescales, their use in actual power converters requires co-packaging and thermal management in multi-chip assemblies characterised by dimensions and time-constants which are a few orders of magnitude larger. In delivering environmentally aware novel solutions for energy utilization, the SP2-Lab takes a holistic research approach encompassing device, module, converter and system level analysis and synthesis to ensure a well-matched and seamless integration of the functional and structural characteristics of all components.
