Investigation of Temperature Sensitive Electrical Parameters for Power Semiconductors (IGBT) in Real-Time Applications

The temperature evolution is the most critical parameter for failure prediction in a packaged module. Therefore obtaining information of the temperature development in a module is of highest priority for reliability. As part of the condition monitoring for power electronic devices, the temperature needs to be measured in order to predict the remaining lifetime. Since temperature cannot be measured directly, temperature sensitive parameters are extracted from characteristic electrical values. In this paper possible measurement methods for the indirect determination of the chip temperature in power semiconductors are presented, analyzed and compared.