The University of Michigan – Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute (UM-SJTU JI, JI hereafter) PhD student Huan Zhang has won the Best Paper Award at the 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference (IPEMC 2020-ECCE Asia) . IEEE is the world’s largest technical professional organization.

The 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference was held in Nanjing, capital city of East China’s Jiangsu Province, from November 29 to December 2, 2020. Huan Zhang, co-supervised by JI Professor Chengbin Ma and JI PhD alumnus Professor Ming Liu from SJTU’s School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, presented his latest progress in the field of megahertz (MHz) wireless power transfer through his paper, A High-Power Density Finite Class E Power Amplifier with “Edge Inductor” for Wireless Power Transfer Application. His presentation and paper was highly recognized by the expert panel invited by the conference organizing committee for his novel idea, clear explanation and good results.

Certificate of Best Paper Award

In his paper, Zhang first introduced the advantages and bottlenecks of the megahertz (MHz) wireless power transfer. One of the main bottlenecks is the contradiction between the inductor volume and the quality factor faced when selecting and designing the power inductor of a MHz converter. Aiming at this bottleneck, he proposed a new concept of edge inductance, which can make full use of the effective area of the PCB circuit board, so that the high-frequency MHz power converter can have higher efficiency and power density. His proposal also provides a solution and preliminary practice for following industrial applications. Meanwhile, multi-objective optimization design was comprehensively used to obtain high power transfer efficiency and high power density. The design concept was validated through actual experiments.

IPEMC 2020-ECCE Asia is a renowned IEEE conference in the field of power electronics and motion control, dedicated to promoting academic exchanges among worldwide peers in relevant fields of power electronics and motion control and cooperation between industry and academia to further advance power electronics and motion control. More than 1000 participants from over 20 countries and regions attended the online meeting. The conference received 1172 submissions from 41 countries and regions, and finally accepted 604 papers for the online presentations.

Biography

Huan Zhang is a Ph.D. student enrolled in 2019 at the Dynamic Systems Control (DSC) Laboratory, UM-SJTU Joint Institute. His research interests include high-frequency power electronics and its applications in compact and robust megahertz wireless power transfer systems. As the first author, he has participated in WPW, IESES, IPEMC and other international conferences for many times. At present, he has submitted one IEEE Trans. Power Electronics journal paper, and another journal paper is in preparation.