QORTEK INC — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S3.03

Description

The goal of the Phase I effort is to design, develop and demonstrate a novel solid-state ceramic-based voltage isolator and demonstrate its potential to provide a highly radiation tolerant digital voltage isolation solution applicable to a wide range of NASA mission requirements. The related design success QorTek has will lead to development in Phase I of a completely new gate drive technology with many advantages and benefits to the entire spectrum of NASA and commercial applications. The Phase I design goals are focused primarily on early COMSOL Multiphysics based Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of the proposed ceramic device, as well as electrical circuit design and SPICE modeling of a high-side MOSFET gate driver system incorporating the new ceramic isolator. This preliminary development early in the program will enable the main objective of Phase I which is to fabricate initial isolator ceramic-based gate driver prototypes and undertake basic electrical test characterization of their performance. An all-inclusive electrical design targeted to isolated MOSFET gate driver applications will also be developed as a functional demonstration platform prototype. The purpose of the Phase I prototypes is to demonstrate, through hardware functional testing and device characterization, that the ceramic gate driver technology provides a feasible size and performance equivalent replacement for similar COTS non-rad hard isolation solutions.