The Namesake of Power Systems Design

­Welcome to the November issue!

With the Spooky Season (and The Battery Show) behind us, we’ve now entered the home stretch of 2025, along with Thanksgiving, the unmitigated horror of Black Friday, and the holidays (and my son’s birthday) to close out the year.

Of late, one of the biggest news stories shone a spotlight on Taiwan’s “Silicon Shield” and its role as a bulwark for World War 3. In a recent interview, US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick strongly encouraged Taiwan to relocate half of its semiconductor production to the U.S. or risk losing American military protection.

If Taiwan balks at the idea – they currently control about 90% of the world’s semiconductor production – economic self-interest could still prevent an invasion from mainland China (which gets over half of its chips from Taiwan), and even if China were so inclined, the “Silicon Shield” has an even greater hold on the U.S., which sources a full 95% of its advanced semiconductors from Taiwan. More in my “Final Thought.”

November’s issue deals with the very casus belli of PSD’s existence – “Power Semiconductors.” Just about everything needs a power source, so this is arguably the most fundamental and expansive topic we deal with.

Naturally, we’ve seen tech like gallium nitride and silicon carbide steal the headlines, and the industry is headed for the Thermosphere (in some cases, literally) – according to one estimate, the market is worth about $56.87 billion now, reaching $74.36 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 5.51%.

But as mentioned, Power Semiconductors is an extremely broad topic, and I’d like to highlight one of this month’s articles, dealing with “Stacked Ceramic Capacitors’ Impact on Switch Mode Power Supplies.”

KYOCERA AVX’s Ron Demcko lays out the innumerable advantages of switch mode power supplies – high conversion efficiency (anywhere from 70% to 90%), less energy dissipation, and smaller, lighter-weight, and lower-value inductors, amongst other factors.

Though SMPS also has its fair share of faults, including and especially complex design requirements and, potentially, disruptive electromagnetic interference (EMI).

That’s where capacitors come in, with the devices enabling input/output filtering, integrating voltage spikes on transistors and diodes, control loop stabilization, and decoupling/filtering power at switching transistors.

And as the headline would indicate, Demcko favors stacked capacitors – “When you compare the ESR of wet aluminum electrolytic capacitors to that of stacked MLCCs over a range of common SMPS switching frequencies, the MLCCs exhibit much lower ESR across the RF spectrum, which directly corresponds to reduced output ripple voltage across frequency.”

Be sure to check that article out, and our usual compliment of Special Report and Technical Features!

Enjoy the November issue!

Best Regards,

Jason Lomberg

North American Editor, PSD