A new generation of modular power inductors with minimum thermal resistance

Improving power density is a permanent challenge of R&D in power electronics. A survey of modern power electronic circuits shows that further optimization has to be based on the passives and particularly on the inductive components. State of the art inductors (e.g. in LC/LCL filters) contribute a lot to space, weight, losses and cost as well. In this paper, a new generation of power inductors is presented. The thermal management of these components has been optimized using FEM and extensive thermal measurements. Thus, much higher electrical current densities have become possible at the same hot-spot temperature, which is finally equivalent to higher energy density and smaller component size.