Research to strengthen European power electronics industry

The project partners will join policymakers and representatives from the project’s sponsors at the two-day eRamp kickoff event. Dr. Reinhard Ploss, CEO, Infineon Technologies, will start off the event by meeting with Sabine von Schorlemer, Saxon State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Fine Arts; Prof. Wolf-Dieter Lukas, department head at the BMBF (German Federal Ministry of Education and Research), the largest national sponsor; and with Dr. Andreas Wild, Executive Director of ENIAC Joint Undertaking, the funding provider of the European Union.

”The research results from eRamp will be an important contribution to even more efficiently use energy,” says Dr. Ploss. ”Europe and Germany are distinguished by their characteristic knowledge and expertise. The partners in the eRamp project have the entire power electronics value creation chain in mind, from generation and transmission all the way to consumption of electric energy. Together we will create new knowledge and thus new products that will mean economic and ecological progress for Europe."

eRamp research activities will focus on the rapid introduction of new production technologies and further exploration of chip packaging technologies for power semiconductors. The German project partners will investigate and develop new methods for speeding up the start of the production run.

In order to investigate research results for practical viability exactly where the new production technologies will be implemented, the German research partners will use existing pilot lines and comprehensive production expertise at various German sites, including Dresden (Infineon: power semiconductors based on 300mm wafers), Reutlingen (Bosch: power semiconductors, smart power and sensors based on 200mm wafers) and Regensburg (Infineon: chip packaging technologies for power semiconductors). Infineon, Osram and Siemens will work together closely to research and construct testing equipment and demonstrators for the evaluation of newly developed chip embedding technologies.

The research partners in the eRamp project are (in alphabetical order): AMS (Unterpremstatten, Austria), CISC Semiconductor (Klagenfurt, Austria), HSEB Dresden (Dresden, Germany), Infineon Technologies (Germany: Dresden, Regensburg, Munich; Villach, Austria and Bucharest, Romania), JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft (Graz, Austria), Lantiq (Villach, Austria), Materials Center Leoben Forschung (Leoben, Austria), NXP Semiconductors (Gratkorn, Austria and Eindhoven, Netherlands), Osram (Munich), Polymer Competence Center Leoben (Leoben, Austria), Robert Bosch (Stuttgart, Germany), SGS INSTITUT FRESENIUS (Taunusstein, Germany), Siemens (Berlin, Munich), SPTS Technologies (Newport, UK), Stichting IMEC Nederland (Eindhoven, Netherlands), SYSTEMA Systementwicklung Dipl.-Inf. Manfred Austen (Dresden), Slovak University of Technology (Bratislava, Slovakia), Technical University Vienna and University of Innsbruck (both in Austria) as well as Technical University Dresden and the West Saxon University of Applied Sciences, Zwickau (Germany).