UMass Lowell offers an Industrial Capstone Project opportunity for their senior students, where they partner up with companies from their industries to work on the real-life engineering projects. (Joke: what is the difference between theory and practice? In theory, there is no difference …). Our team worked with MACOM, on a thermal model of their GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT). This was needed to be able to identify the thermal generation and heat distribution inside the transistor and account for thermal degradation due to hot spots. Our model replicated the thermal behavior of a real transistor with an accuracy of within 5°C at peak temperatures of 135°C.
