Post-Master PDEng position on high-voltage pulsed-power plasma generation

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 Wassenburg Medical and Eindhoven University of Technology. 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.

The PDEng project is part of a large project that aims at the advancement of disinfection of medical equipment at several stages. This is divided in subprojects, two of which are: plasma based synthesis of sterilant formulations and purification of water and air for rinsing disinfected equipment to make this independent from local water. These two projects rely heavily on high-voltage plasma generation, which is the topic of the PDEng project.

The project consists of two important phases. Phase 1 is the complete system identification of the apparatus in which the high-voltage plasma generator needs to be implemented and phase 2 is the development of a high-voltage pulsed power source for plasma generation.

In this project you will be working closely together with BSc, MSc and PhD students from the university, and engineers from the project partners. Activities will be a balanced mixed of research and design activities.

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.

We are looking for candidates that match the following profile:

• A master's degree in Electrical Engineering with excellent grades, preferably with a specialization in power electronics and high-voltage engineering and some knowledge of (non-thermal) plasma.
• Experience with working in a lab environment.
• Be able bridge the gap between fundamental concepts and theories on the one hand, and practical implementation and evaluation of these concepts on the other hand.
• A team player that enjoys to work in multidisciplinary teams.
• Good communication and organization skills.
• Excellent English language skills (writing and presenting).