Advances in electrification have led to greater energy efficiencies in a whole range of new market solutions. Semiconductor technology is also keeping up where suppliers have developed new switching methods, contributing to increased bandwidth and enabling the introduction of devices using GaN and SiC materials. While it’s true that increased bandwidth enables suppliers to reduce the size of magnetic components as the magnetizing inductance increases, there is a downside. Existing core magnetics materials often struggle to dissipate less power as the frequency increases. It isn’t uncommon to see excess core losses as the frequency approaches 1 MHz in materials with high flux density and low coercivity.

Bourns, in collaboration with the Tyndall Research Institute in Ireland presented research papers at both the APEC 2019 and PCIM 2019 conferences on a new magnetics core material.  Attendees were made aware of the development of new materials that have been calculated and tested to achieve minimal core losses at high switching frequencies. It is known that certain magnetic materials enable better performance at different switching frequencies compared to others.  Knowing that amorphous materials have a good mixture of coercivity and saturation flux density, the team concentrated its research here. One of the main objectives was to prepare and test amorphous material that did not depend on traditional elements, and that could be produced at a lower cost.

The important facts of this research are outlined in a new Bourns white paper:  The Development of New Amorphous Cores for High Frequency Power Applications. The paper provides an overview of core material terminology and describes the results obtained from the new material produced by Bourns. It presents how core losses were calculated and measured, and the team’s initial findings. You will also learn about how to apply the results to applications and what future research work with the new materials is planned.