Post-Master PDEng position on high-voltage pulsed-power plasma cleaning at Eindhoven University of Technology

The Electrical Energy Systems (EES) group within the Department of Electrical Engineering of Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) seeks to hire an outstanding PDEng candidate within the field of high-voltage pulsed power plasma applications.

This post-master designers program is a two-year salaried program and leads to a Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) degree.

Project description
An important part of the PDEng programme is the design project which will be performed at VDL Enabling Technologies Group in Eindhoven. The project is spread over two years and aims to develop your design engineers' abilities. In the project, a specific design objective must be reached within a restricted period of time and with limited means. In accordance with the supervising professor the candidate will be given the opportunity to gather specialized knowledge for the design project already in the first year of your Traineeship. You will be coached by experienced design engineers from industry and/or by TU/e staff with clear and relevant design experience. You will acquire independence and learn to make choices and work well in a project-based manner.

Since many years, VDL-ETG has been investing in understanding and controlling contamination in equipment for semiconductor, analytical, integrated photonics and other applications. Multiple projects have been executed on Plasma Assisted Contamination Control, with the goal to use a plasma to remove particles from a surface or a gas flow. To increase the effectivity of the plasma and reduce the required electric power a pulsed plasma source is expected to be of advantage. Therefore, the overall goal for the design project of this PDEng position is to develop, build and test a cost efficient compact pulsed plasma source reactor which matches well with the existing plasma reactor. If needed the plasma reactor design should be changed to facilitate efficient operation of the high voltage pulse source. In this project you will be working closely together with BSc, MSc and PhD student from the university, and engineers from VDL-ETG who work on customer related projects. Activities will be a balanced mixed of research and design activities. Publication opportunities are also foreseen.

Electrical Energy Sytems Group
Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) is a world-leading research university specializing in engineering science & technology. The Department of Electrical Engineering is responsible for research and education in Electrical Engineering. The discipline covers technologies and electrical phenomena involved in computer engineering, information processing, energy transfer and telecommunication. The department strives for societal relevance through an emphasis on the fields of smart sustainable systems, the connected world and care & cure. The TU/e is the world's best-performing research university in terms of research cooperation with industry (#1 since 2009).

The Electrical Energy Systems (EES) group has a strong research line on Pulsed Power Technology, which is the topic that deals with the generation of the short high-voltage pulses. By generating very short high-voltage pulses, we can produce chemically active electrical discharges (plasmas). These plasmas can then be employed for environmental applications, such as air or water purification or to 'activate' water, which gives the water disinfecting and fertilizing properties. Other uses for plasma are medical (wound disinfection, wound healing acceleration) and surface treatment of materials (etching, deposition of layers, surface modification, etc.). Pulsed Power Technology is practiced at several world-recognized institutes around the world. One of these top institutes is the EES group at Eindhoven University of Technology.

In EES' brand new High-Voltage laboratory (a 14x14x8m Faraday cage) we work on (nanosecond) high-voltage pulse source design, plasmas, the applications and all the intermediate steps in the process. Our main focus is on the development of nanosecond pulsed high-voltage circuits that generate pulses from several kV to hundreds of kV and from less than one nanosecond duration to pulses of several hundreds of nanoseconds duration. These circuits increasingly consist of power electronics components that are aggregated into fast and flexible high-voltage pulse circuits and applied to plasma applications. It is this last area which is the focus of the design project of this PDEng position.

Further details:
Post-Master PDEng position on high-voltage pulsed-power plasma cleaning at Eindhoven University of Technology