Thermal Management: A Broad Overview of Cooling Techniques

12/01/2018
Category: Reliability
In the world of electronics, heat can severely shorten the lifetime of a device. It is therefore necessary to move heat away from vital components such as chips, LEDs, and inverters to maintain optimal performance without shortening the lifetime. There are many different thermal management techniques that can be utilized by engineers depending on the devices heat density, space constraints, and cost.

Thermal Resistance Value in a Data Sheet Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story About Thermal Performance

11/01/2018
Category: Thermal Management
A data sheet is the main source of information for design engineers to understand the overall performance of a power module. It provides a wide variety of values and diagrams but detailed background explanations on each parameter are often missing. On the other hand, a test set up cannot cover all possible applications or operating conditions and the values can vary according to the user's particular application.

Considerations for Choosing the Optimal Busbar for Your Electric Vehicle Battery System

09/28/2018
Category: Thermal Management
I recently participated in the Battery Show in Novi, Michigan where I gave a presentation during the conference on the connection of the battery cell for electric vehicles (EV). For those of you who could not attend, here is a short summary and my observations on this subject.

Are you flattering me?

08/31/2018
Category: Reliability
Who cares about flatness? Process and application engineers do! These are not flattering words as they truly know how critical it is to understand and control the shape of one’s substrate, base plate and heat sink in order to achieve the best possible production yield and module performance. In this blog, I want to share with you some information about flatness that you may wish to consider as you design or use power modules.

Building Power Modules is not Magic but Requires High Quality Substrates

07/31/2018
Category: Reliability
Design engineers are selecting Direct Bonded Copper (DBC) and Active Metal Brazed (AMB) substrates as circuit material for bare semiconductor chips in their power modules as they efficiently dissipate the waste heat from the semiconductors and increase the lifetime of the modules. In this blog, we explain the production process for power modules and highlight the most important characteristics of the substrates at each step of this assembly process.

Reliable DC Link Systems for Next Generation High Power Applications by Dominik Pawlik

06/29/2018
Category: Reliability
Nowadays the requirements for high power density, increased reliability and low inductance are not only important for busbars but also for complete inverter design. In higher-power applications such as traction, solar and wind inverters and the powertrains of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), energy must be channeled with minimal combining and distribution loss.

Get the Heat Out! Considerations for Dissipating Heat from your Semiconductor Device

06/01/2018
Category: Thermal Management
Thermal management is required to achieve optimal power electronic system performance and reliability. While in operation, power semiconductor devices generate a lot of waste heat as a result of conductive and switching losses. This heat has to be dissipated from the semiconductor junction to the semiconductor package and ultimately to the ambient environment to prevent thermal runaway.

Reliability of Metallized Ceramic Substrates for Power Electronics Applications

05/01/2018
Category: Reliability
As a design engineer for power electronics systems, you require the selected power module to fulfill its electrical function as described in its data sheet and you expect this module to be reliable meaning that it should operate under given conditions, in a defined period of time and within an acceptable failure rate.