Breaking the mold: How a new magnetic packaging technology will reshape the future of power modules

As a seasoned marathon runner, Kenji Kawano knows the value of patience and perseverance when striving for a distant finish line. Developing new technology can also be a marathon, with gradual gains, inevitable setbacks and hard-won successes. Kenji, a Japan-based senior manager of Power at Kilby Labs, our applied research lab for innovative breakthroughs, had run this course many times.

Kenji and a global team of designers, researchers and manufacturers at our company made a significant investment of time and effort working on a technology designed to improve power modules, the plug-and-play building blocks of electronic design.

The result is the new, proprietary MagPack integrated magnetic packaging technology for power modules that provides previously unachievable performance levels for designers of industrial, enterprise and communications applications.

“This technology delivers higher power density, higher efficiency and lower system cost,” Kenji said.

The need for more efficiency

Power modules are ubiquitous in modern technologies. They integrate multiple electronic components into a single package and help designers reduce how much time they spend on design flow. However, as the world consumes more power and applications get smaller and smaller, there is constant demand to reduce power module sizes and boost their efficiency so that they can fit into small devices such as digital pens.

Anton Winkler, a German-based systems engineer and module technologist at our company, grappled with how to improve power module performance. His work in the field ultimately led to a long-term collaboration with Kenji.

“I knew Kenji had been working on this as well,” Anton said. “So, we took it on as a technology development across multiple teams.”

Simple design principles, tricky implementation

In power design, size matters. Designers are being asked to pack more power in smaller spaces, a challenge when components are tightly packed and must handle different voltages without shorting.

“You want the right amount of energy to flow to the load. Otherwise, the load does not function correctly or will get destroyed,” Anton said.

Power modules typically contain semiconductors attached to a substrate and a separate inductor that stores energy in a magnetic field and helps smooth the flow of electricity. Inductors can be an efficiency bottleneck, and take up a lot of board space. Selecting the right inductor can also be a time-consuming process for designers.

Recognizing this dilemma, the team combined the inductor with the integrated circuit to conserve volume and increase power density. Although the design principle was simple, making it work was a challenge. The team used a neural network-based approach to optimize the inductor to specifications, and the 3D package molding process enabled the team to utilize the maximum height, weight and depth of the MagPack package, which includes the oprtimized power inductor with a proprietary, newly engineered material. 

"There were mechanical, electrical and chemical processes involved. It really was a multidisciplinary undertaking," Anton said.

The new power modules give designers options in terms of size or performance. They can enable engineers to reduce the power solution size in half and double the power density. For example, designers of optical modules can use a power module with MagPack technology to double power density while maintaining the existing form factor. This is especially important in applications like data centers that consume an enormous amount of power.

The technology also helps minimize system losses, reduce the module’s temperature, and lower electromagnetic interference. And the effort and collaboration spent developing the technology will ultimately mean that designers could save as much as 45% of time on their power designs.

Challenging the status quo

With prototypes ready, the next task was to produce the power modules on an industrial scale. Our packaging team led the manufacturing process definition, sourcing the materials and preparing new tools to produce the components. It was both exciting and a “ton of pressure,” said John Carlo Molina, a packaging engineering manager in the Philippines who led the manufacturing effort.

“We were building something groundbreaking, challenging the status quo and introducing new package configurations," John Carlo said. “But we knew success would not be measured by originality alone. From day one, our focus has been on developing a reliable, high-quality product using a process that can support high-volume manufacturing. Shipping our first samples for testing was a relief and also great motivation for the next stages.”

Even though the technology is new, its developers envision its application in small and large applications such as patient monitoring and diagnostics, instrumentation, aerospace and defense, and data centers.

“My personal goal is to continue to expand the markets we can go after and eventually meet the industry standards necessary to have it be an automotive-qualified technology,” Anton said.

As power demands increase exponentially across all markets and applications, the new MagPack integrated magnetic packaging technology will help reshape the future of power design and enable engineers to push more power into smaller spaces than ever before.