Review of cryogenic power electronics for all-electric aircraft

Abdelrahman Elwakeel*, Yuchuan Liao, Yudi Xiao, Rafael Peña Alzola, Min Zhang, Weijia Yuan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

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Abstract

To tackle emissions from the aviation industry and make it sustainable, research has been targeting electrifying aircraft. For this aim, articles have been focusing on how to replace regular jet engines with liquid hydrogen as fuel. This would be beneficial as hydrogen is expected to play a dual role, providing fuel for fuel cells to propel the aircraft electrically and to supply cooling to enable high-power density technologies such as superconducting machines and cryogenic power electronics circuits. However, using higher power density, especially cryogenic power electronics, can be challenging. This article investigates cryogenic power electronics for use on all-electric aircraft across different aspects, where it lays out how to integrate power electronics at cryogenic temperature into the architecture of the all-electric aircraft, how to use them with hydrogen fuel cells, and the voltage levels of the system. It reviews different semiconductor device technologies, circuit topologies, and passive devices to be used in power electronics circuitry, as well as logic circuits that are suitable for use at cryogenic temperatures. In addition, the article discusses the challenges of using semiconductor devices at such low temperatures, including the reliability, overall cooling, and recycling of hydrogen.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)30646-30664
Number of pages19
JournalIEEE Access
Volume13
Early online date5 Feb 2025
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Feb 2025

Funding

This work was supported by UKRI and by the EPSRC under grant EP/Y006437/1.

Keywords

  • cryogenic electronics
  • gate driver
  • cryogenic propulsion

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