DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-EFFICIENCY POWER DISTRIBUTION ARCHITECTURES BASED ON GAN DEVICES FOR THE LIQUID ARGON CALORIMETER ATLAS EXPERIMENT AT THE LHC
Power management becomes more critical as society moves towards sustainability and minimum environmental footprint. High-energy physics experiment, such as the ATLAS detector in the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, also require energy sustainability, spatial limitations, and operation reliability requirements. This thesis is focused on the development and application of a new power distribution solution for the front-end electronics of the ATLAS Liquid Argon (LAr) calorimeter. This development is necessitated by the upgrade that the experiment will receive in the coming years. To meet the more stringent performance demands, Wide Band Gap (WBG) materials like gallium nitride (GaN) are also employed in place of traditional silicon. GaN devices possess inherent benefits of increased efficiency, reduced conduction and switching losses, better thermal management, and better radiation hardness. All these are precious features in the radiation-ensured environment of particle physics experiments. The main task of the thesis is addresses the complete redesign of the Power Distribution Board (PDB2) of the LAr Trigger Board. PDB2 is the new board that integrates new DC-DC converters, called bPOL, that are GaN-based one which will be capable of withstanding doses greater than 2000 kGy, which will ensure compatibility with the new voltage and the hard radiation environment. The updated PDB had the same mechanical limitations as the original but featured substantial efficiency and reliability improvements. This thesis also describe the design and prototyping of a new Low Voltage Power Supply (LVPS) system, and it was co-designed with CAEN. The system relocates the power units into more comfortable positions of the detector and provides an output of 48 V as a step towards reducing current and related cable losses.
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