Superjunction has arguably been the most creative and important concept in the power device field since the introduction of the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) in the 1980s. It is the only concept known today that has challenged and ultimately proved wrong the well-known theoretical study on the limit of silicon in high-voltage devices. This paper deals with the history, device and process development, and the future prospects of Superjunction technologies. It covers fundamental physics, technological challenges as well as aspects of design and modeling of unipolar devices, such as CoolMOS. The superjunction concept is compared to other methods of enhancing the conductivity of power devices (from bipolar to employment of wide-bandgap materials) to derive its set of benefits and limitations. This paper closes with the application of the superjunction concept to other structures or materials, such as terminations, superjunction IGBTs, or silicon carbide Field Effect Transistors (FETs).

Optical gas sensors play an increasingly important role in many applications. Sensing techniques based on mid-infrared absorption spectroscopy offer excellent stability, selectivity and sensitivity, for numerous possibilities expected for sensors integrated into mobile and wearable devices. Here we review recent progress towards the miniaturization and integration of optical gas sensors, with a focus on low-cost and low-power consumption devices.

This paper addresses the practical implementation of a wireless sensors network designed to actualize cyber-physical systems that are dedicated to structural health monitoring applications in the construction domain. This network consists of a mesh grid composed of LoRaWAN battery-free wireless sensing nodes that collect physical data and communicating nodes that interface the sensing nodes with the digital world through the Internet. Two prototypes of sensing nodes were manufactured and are powered wirelessly by using a far-field wireless power transmission technique and only one dedicated RF energy source operating in the ISM 868 MHz frequency band. These sensing nodes can simultaneously perform temperature and relative humidity measurements and can transmit the measured data wirelessly over long-range distances by using the LoRa technology and the LoRaWAN protocol. Experimental results for a simplified network confirm that the periodicity of the measurements and data transmission of the sensing nodes can be controlled by the dedicated RF source (embedded in or just controlled by the associated communicating node), by tuning the radiated power density of the RF waves, and without any modification of the software or the hardware implemented in the sensing nodes.

Predictions on limits of silicon in power devices have failed spectacularly in the past, but in spite of that, the theory that generated them is still used today and adapted for wide bandgap materials to justify their superior standing against silicon. The superjunction (SJ) MOSFET was the first device to break by more than one order of magnitude the so-called “limit of silicon” above 600 V. The current theory of SJ seems, however, to define a new technology-based limit rather than a material-based only limit. This implies that by scaling down the dimensions, in particular the cell pitch, the on-state resistances can continually decrease by several orders of magnitude, without a boundary. This paper shows that the downscaling of the cell dimensions cannot happen indefinitely and there is a material-dependent intrinsic limit for any power device, which no longer is limited by the geometry or the technology available. Using an analytical approach, and backed up by advanced numerical simulations, we show that the minimum cell pitch is $0.18~\mu \text{m}$ for silicon and $0.05~\mu \text{m}$ for 4H silicon carbide, and further reduction in the cell pitch would result in an increase in the specific resistance. Finally, a new figure of merit for an SJ MOSFET based on a rigorous 2-D analysis is defined.