There is no universal charger for all kinds of batteries, since distinct industries focus on different technical and commercial requirements. This article summarizes the needs of industrial and automotive chargers as well as topologies to meet them.

To reduce our carbon footprint by electrifying society, massive deployment of renewable energy sources has become mandatory. This requires grid-tied energy storage system to balance energy production and consumption demands, to help grid stability.

Nowadays the use of lithium-ion batteries is growing very quickly in numerous fields of application, including high performance electric vehicles as well as grid-tied power converters for the integration of renewable energy.

Wide band-gap power semiconductor devices such as SiC and GaN devices break thermal operating limits and switching speed limits of the Si semiconductors.

Many publications have already dealt with the unwanted parasitic turn-on (PTO) of semiconductor devices and how to get rid of it. But in the same-titled paper, it was shown that high power applications may even benefit from a small PTO.

Without semiconductors, the world would be a very different place; we would have no electronic hand calculators, microwave ovens, digital alarm clocks, cellphones, personal computers, electronically controlled transmissions, or washing machines.