Developments on DC/DC converters for the LHC experiment upgrades

Prototypes of DC/DC power and Point of Load (PoL) converters were designed and built with the aim of satisfying the foreseen working parameters of the High Luminosity (HL) LHC experiments, using both Silicon (Si) MOSFETs and/or more recent devices substantiated of better power performance, like Silicon Carbide (SiC) and Gallium Nitride (GaN) transistors. Optimization of their design, based on the comparison between the simulated and measured thermal, electrical and mechanical performance, is in progress, and many improvements with respect to the previous versions are under implementation. We discuss in this paper the results of the last modifications. In addition, many tens of discrete component samples, chosen among the devices commercially available in the three different technologies (Si, SiC and GaN), were electrically characterized and tested under γ-rays, neutron, proton and heavy ion radiation, also using a combined run method. We have also planned to test some commercial DC/DCs under the extreme conditions of radiation and magnetic field expected in the upgrades of the LHC experiments. Here we show the first results on few samples. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl.