Thermal performance of a power electronics module made by thick-film planar interconnection of power devices

In today's power electronics modules, power semiconductor devices are interconnected via wire bonds, causing large parasitic noises due to the long interconnection path. Over the last few years, we have been developing a thick-film planar interconnect technique to enable the construction of three-dimensional integrated power electronics modules (IPEM); we call this technique Embedded Power. The Embedded Power module is built by mounting power devices in the openings of a ceramic substrate followed by printing a polymer dielectric isolation layer and vapor-depositing multilayer metallic thin films for the construction of a three-dimensional package. Evidence shows that compared with the conventional wire-bonded modules, power modules made by using Embedded Power technology have lower parasitic noises due to its integrated, multilayer design. Since power density in the Embedded Power module is increased, its thermal management needs to be examined to assure it meets all the thermal requirements. In this paper, the thermal performance of this IPEM has been studied both experimentally and numerically and preliminary results are reported here. A finite difference-based thermal solver is used to simulate the beat transfer in the IPEM. The modeling prediction on the IPEM is verified with inserted thermocouples.