Nanocrystalline Powder Cores for High-Power High-Frequency Power Electronics Applications

Soft magnetic composites (SMCs) based magnetic cores are attractive in high-frequency inductor design. The desired overall core permeability of SMC core can be achieved by adjusting the powder size, addition of insulation material and phosphoric acid, and pressure during the preparation process to reduce the air gap loss and ease the inductor design. The nanocrystalline alloy (Fe-Cu-Nb-Si-B) is an emerging SMC with high saturation flux density and low hysteresis loss, showing potential suitability for SMC-based magnetic cores. To date, nanocrystalline alloys are mostly used in form of laminated ribbon for magnetic cores, and nanocrystalline powder SMCs have been seldom used in practice. Also, neither experimental validation nor comparison with other commercialized and commonly used SMC cores has been reported. In this article, the structure and manufacturing process of nanocrystalline powder cores are introduced. The calculation of core loss is defined for the nanocrystalline powder core. The characteristics and performance of the nanocrystalline powder toroidal core are compared with those of existing commercial SMC cores, such as Fe-Si powder (X flux), Fe-Ni powder (High flux), Fe-Si-Al powder (Kool Mμ), and Fe-Ni-Mo powder (MPP). Experimental results are conducted at frequencies from 100 to 600 kHz to verify the loss calculation and feasibility of this new nanocrystalline powder core.