Dr. Neo Lophitis is an Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) at the School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics and the Research Institte for Future Transport and Cities, Coventry University. He is also an Academic Collaborator with the High Voltage Microelectronics and Sensors Group, University of Cambridge. 

Neo received the Bachelor of Arts with Honours (BA Hons) in Electrical and Information Science (2008), the Master of Engineering (MEng) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (2009) and the PhD in Power (2014) from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.

Before he joined Coventry, between 2013-2015, he was a post-doctoral researcher at HVMS and also consulted an R&D project at Cambridge Microelectronics (Camutronics) LTD and Anvil Semiconductors LTD.

In 2016, his work at Coventry achieved the acknowledgement from the European Centre for Power Electronics (ECPE) which granted Coventry the status of an “ECPE Competence Centre”. In 2018 he achieved the accession of Coventry as full member of the EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics. He then became the Coventry representative at the Centre and member of its Steering and Advisory Group (STAG).

He is currently the author/co-author of more than 45 academic manuscripts, including 1 book chapter, 2 patent families, journals and leading conference publications. Neophytos is a regular reviewer for journals and conferences. He reviewed tens of articles submitted at the IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, IEEE Electron Device Letters, IET Power Electronics, IET Electronics Letters, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Applied Physics Letters and IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition.

His research includes addressing issues associated with the functionality, efficient performance and reliability of power and photovoltaic semiconductor devices by means of modelling, simulation, design, fabrication and evaluation of novel concepts both in Silicon and wide bandgap materials such as Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride. For more details visit his personal website: http://nlophitis.info

Active Projects

Underpinning Power Electronics (UPE) 2: Switch Optimisation Theme  (EP/R00448X/1)

Dr. Neo Lophitis is the Coventry PI in one of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) five flagship Underpinning Power Electronics (UPE) projects. Each of the three-year £1.2-£1.4 million projects focuses on a different aspect of the power electronics supply chain with the aim of creating new devices and applications to fully realise the energy saving potential of this emerging technology.

Partnering Cambridge, Newcastle and Warwick on the ‘switch optimisation’ theme, we will be developing ultrahigh voltage silicon carbide (SiC) n-IGBTs. With voltage ratings over 10 kV, nearly 10 times the voltage rating of any SiC device on the open market, SiC insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) have the potential to make considerable gains in efficiency for the National grid, e.g. when connecting off-shore wind power to the network. One PhD student is supervised on this topic.

Power integrated circuits in 3C-SiC-on-Si for compact high performance electronics

Wide bandgap semiconductors are ideal for handling high voltage at a wide range of temperatures. 3C-SiC is a particularly interesting SiC polytype that can be grown on Silicon substrates, thus making it ideal for large area, low cost, power integrated circuits. Being a SiC polytype, it has excellent thermal conductivity and excellent electrical properties at high temperature. This makes it a fantastic candidate material for lateral,  and vertical power devices integrated with CMOS. This includes the integration of Silicon CMOS too. Because it is a strong material too, thin devices, even free standing or membrance can be designed with little issue of cracking.  Dr. Neo Lophitis is supervising a PhD student on this subject.

Effects of Batteries Ageing on Automotive Traction Battery Performance

Due to the large upfront expenditure of a battery pack, usage lifetime optimisation is an important objective both for battery pack design and control system. In this work we aim to review the physical and chemical ageing mechanisms, the impact on cell performance and the factors that accelerate them. This knowledge is essential both for the battery pack design and the battery management system, and the way in which they can minimise the effects of cell ageing through controlling factors such as temperature, current and Voltage limits in an intelligent approach. This work is also the first step towards the design of an advanced cell ageing model that can be used to inform both the design of battery packs but also the battery management system. This can then be used to assess the ageing impact of usage from both vehicle and energy storage applications, in particular vehicle-to-grid interactions, ‘powerwall’ type applications and large scale energy storage. This project is a collaboration between Coventry and Horriba-MIRA. Dr. Neo Lophitis is supervising one PhD student on this subject.

Open Research Positions

PhD in Reliable power conversion through condition monitoring of power semiconductors and electronics

Power Electronics Converters are exceptionally important in systems that operate in changeable, isolated, challenging environments or where the degradation of operation can potentially be life threatening. Practical examples of scenarios which would benefit from the integration of Condition Monitoring include; offshore wind turbines, aerospace power supplies, traction drives and electric vehicles.

MRes in Reliable and compact high performance power electronics in electric and hybrid vehicles through power semiconductor engineering

Master in power semiconductor engineering for the development of high performance and reliable power semiconductor devices. The focus of the project will be to design devices that mitigate from issues that cause reliability problems and fully exploit the advanced characteristics of wide band gap semiconductors.

Power semiconductor devices and power electronics

Efficient and reliable power and energy conversion

Batteries for automotive applications