CPES graduate student Amy Romero has been highlighted in the December issue of ARPA-E's e-newseltter. Romero was one of several CPES students and faculty members to attend the ARPA-E summit in Washington, D.C. in March. Along with Ph.D. student Christina DiMarino and professor Rolando Burgos, she is partnering with HRL Laboratories for the SWITCHES (Strategies for Wide Bandgap, Inexpensive Transistors for Controlling High-Efficiency Systems) program, which is focused on developing projects for next-generation power switching devices that will dramatically improve energy efficiency in a wide range of applications. In the left photo, Romero can be seen demonstrating her test set-up for HRL's vertical GaN transistor during the summit's technology showcase. The transistor has been tested up to 450 V and 2 A and is currently the only vertical GaN transistor to be switched up to 450V.
Romero has coauthored a paper with DiMarino, Burgos, and Ray Li, Mary Chen, and Rongming Chu of HRL Laboratories on the transistor, which was presented at the 2017 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition.
The paper is available to CPES members in our digital library.