FastLane

Boosting the European Value Chain for Sustainable Power Electronics

Project Code: PN-IV-P8-8.1-PME-2024-0039

Contract number: 22 ⁄ 2024

GA number: 101139788

Project Title: Boosting the European Value Chain for Sustainable Power Electronics

Project type: European Project Chips JU

Project Description: FastLane targets a full, highly competitive and sustainable European value chain for Silicon Carbide (SiC) based power electronics. The goal is to provide a competitive technology excellence from engineered SiC substrates to novel devices, smart power modules and converters to broadened automotive and industrial applications. The next generation of SiC materials will be developed by improved quality of the crystalline starting material, material re-use and acceleration of substrate EU-based manufacturing. Based on the new materials the next generation SiC MOSFET power devices will be developed overcoming current limitations regarding efficiency, performance, robustness and sustainability and will integrate also new on-chip sensing technology. Power modules based on the devices will be further improved by several innovations, e.g. advanced sintering which will lead to improved power module reliability and therefore better sustainability. On component level, highly efficient and reliable inverters for automotive and industrial applications will be developed, including a variety of innovations in detail. In all steps, an improvement of SiC material characterization methodologies will increase the quality and the output of EU based semiconductors. Overall, performance and reliability are expected to increase greatly in all steps. These developments will lead to an overall reduction of cost and, by reduction of the footprint (lifetime increase, CO2 decrease, water consumption decrease), to a greener economy.

Project objectives:

  • Environmental footprint reduction;
  • Sustainable European sovereignty in power electronics;
  • Broaden SiC functionalities;
  • Overcome device-related limitations;
  • Achieve cost benefits by reuse of automotive economy of scale.

The working plan:

Project Title: Boosting the European Value Chain for Sustainable Power Electronics

WP1 – Use case definition & requirements

WP2 – SiC materials and substrates

WP3 – Devices for SiC applications

WP4 – Efficient packaging and modules

WP5 – Components and systems

WP6 – Demonstration and validation

WP7 – Exploitation and dissemination

WP8 – Project management

General information:

Duration: 36 Months

Start and end date: 2024 06 01 – 2027 05 31

Coordinator: Valeo France

Partners No: 29

Total Budget: € 96.8M

EU budget contribution: € 23.4M

More information can be found here: https://fastlaneproject.eu/en/

Further details can be obtained from:

Contact person name: Prof. Dr.rer.nat. Marius ENACHESCU

Position: Project Director

Tel.: +40213107633, Fax: +40214023815, e-mail: marius.enachescu@cssnt-upb.ro