IEM Seminar: Breaking the Power, Frequency, and Thermal Limits of Electronics
Event details
| Date | 01.06.2026 |
| Hour | 11:00 › 12:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Elison Matioli, Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics laboratory (POWERlab), IEM |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
Abstract
The exponential growth of AI-driven applications, the rapid electrification and automation of transportation and services, and deployment of renewable energy, among others, are placing unprecedented demands on electronic systems, from more powerful data centers, to more efficient power converters and higher power-density electronics. The massive increase in data exchange for wireless communications, together with next-generation imaging and sensing, is requiring greater bandwidth, faster connectivity, and higher data rates. At the same time, as power densities rise and system sizes shrink, thermal management has become a major challenge for electronic systems, not only for power and RF applications, but also for high-performance CPUs and GPUs, which is increasingly difficult to handle by conventional technologies. These future applications require new semiconductor device concepts capable of delivering more power with higher efficiency, better thermal management and at lower cost.
In this talk, I will present our group's strategy to address these challenges, from semiconductor design all the way to the system level. In power electronics, I will present new technologies based on multi-channel devices (Nature Electronics 2021) and intrinsic polarization superjunctions (accepted in Nature Electronics 2026) that significantly reduce losses and increase power in wide-band-gap semiconductors, far surpassing the current state of the art. In RF electronics, I will present novel concepts to bridge the gap between electronic and photonic devices in the THz range, based on nanoplasma switches (Nature 2020) and electronic metadevices (Nature 2023), with cut-off frequency figures-of-merit near 20 THz, and broader applications spanning correlated-materials physics (Nature Electronics 2022) and on-chip CO₂ valorization. In thermal management, I will demonstrate a new approach to extract heat where it is generated, inside the semiconductor, through the monolithic co-design of microfluidics and electronics within the same substrate (Nature 2020) — removing heat fluxes above 1.7 kW/cm² and enabling significantly higher power density and efficiency in both power converters and high-performance CPUs and GPUs. Together, these directions pave the way for the next generation of energy-efficient, high-frequency, and high-density electronics.
Biography
Elison Matioli is Associate Professor at the Institute of Electrical and Micro-Engineering at EPFL, where he directs the Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics laboratory (POWERlab), and co-founded and directs the EPFL Epitaxy Platform (EPiX). He received a double B.Sc. degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics from École Polytechnique (France) and in Electrical Engineering from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), a Ph.D. from the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a postdoctoral associate at MIT. His research focuses on power and high-frequency electronics based on wide- and ultra-wide-band-gap semiconductors, monolithic in-chip thermal management, and ultrafast electronic devices for THz applications. Prof. Matioli has been awarded two ERC grants (Advanced 2024 and Starting 2015), the 2020 EPFL University Latsis Prize, the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Letter Award, and the 2013 IEEE George Smith Award. His PhD students and postdocs have received 18 best paper and thesis awards, 5 have received professorships at leading universities, and 3 spin-offs have been founded from his laboratory, including Corintis SA, ranked the #1 Swiss start-up of 2025.
The exponential growth of AI-driven applications, the rapid electrification and automation of transportation and services, and deployment of renewable energy, among others, are placing unprecedented demands on electronic systems, from more powerful data centers, to more efficient power converters and higher power-density electronics. The massive increase in data exchange for wireless communications, together with next-generation imaging and sensing, is requiring greater bandwidth, faster connectivity, and higher data rates. At the same time, as power densities rise and system sizes shrink, thermal management has become a major challenge for electronic systems, not only for power and RF applications, but also for high-performance CPUs and GPUs, which is increasingly difficult to handle by conventional technologies. These future applications require new semiconductor device concepts capable of delivering more power with higher efficiency, better thermal management and at lower cost.
In this talk, I will present our group's strategy to address these challenges, from semiconductor design all the way to the system level. In power electronics, I will present new technologies based on multi-channel devices (Nature Electronics 2021) and intrinsic polarization superjunctions (accepted in Nature Electronics 2026) that significantly reduce losses and increase power in wide-band-gap semiconductors, far surpassing the current state of the art. In RF electronics, I will present novel concepts to bridge the gap between electronic and photonic devices in the THz range, based on nanoplasma switches (Nature 2020) and electronic metadevices (Nature 2023), with cut-off frequency figures-of-merit near 20 THz, and broader applications spanning correlated-materials physics (Nature Electronics 2022) and on-chip CO₂ valorization. In thermal management, I will demonstrate a new approach to extract heat where it is generated, inside the semiconductor, through the monolithic co-design of microfluidics and electronics within the same substrate (Nature 2020) — removing heat fluxes above 1.7 kW/cm² and enabling significantly higher power density and efficiency in both power converters and high-performance CPUs and GPUs. Together, these directions pave the way for the next generation of energy-efficient, high-frequency, and high-density electronics.
Biography
Elison Matioli is Associate Professor at the Institute of Electrical and Micro-Engineering at EPFL, where he directs the Power and Wide-band-gap Electronics laboratory (POWERlab), and co-founded and directs the EPFL Epitaxy Platform (EPiX). He received a double B.Sc. degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics from École Polytechnique (France) and in Electrical Engineering from the University of São Paulo (Brazil), a Ph.D. from the Materials Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was a postdoctoral associate at MIT. His research focuses on power and high-frequency electronics based on wide- and ultra-wide-band-gap semiconductors, monolithic in-chip thermal management, and ultrafast electronic devices for THz applications. Prof. Matioli has been awarded two ERC grants (Advanced 2024 and Starting 2015), the 2020 EPFL University Latsis Prize, the 2022 IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics Prize Letter Award, and the 2013 IEEE George Smith Award. His PhD students and postdocs have received 18 best paper and thesis awards, 5 have received professorships at leading universities, and 3 spin-offs have been founded from his laboratory, including Corintis SA, ranked the #1 Swiss start-up of 2025.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- Prof. Vivek Subramanian, IEM Director