Integrating power semiconductor device courses in electrical engineering curricula, a review paper

Abstract

The skills needed to build the next-generation of power semiconductor devices and to integrate them into power electronic systems require proper education and training of engineering students, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. To assess the current state of power electronics education, a study of curricular offering in power electronics in the U.S. universities is conducted. The study shows that there is a lack of course offering in semiconductor power devices with a lack of critical topics such as thermal management, temperature effects, reliability, power packaging, modeling, systems integration, and failure analysis. To remedy these deficiencies, new power electronics tracks/concentrations for undergraduate and graduate programs are proposed. The proposed curricular modifications are designed to be rigorous to meet the future needs of the power electronic industry, but flexible enough to be easily adopted by different institutions.