Study of Bonding Wire Failure Effects on External Measurable Signals of IGBT Module

The relationship between bonding wire liftoff and terminal voltage in insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) power module is studied. Bonding wire liftoff failure is one of the most dominant limiting factors to the reliability behavior of IGBT power module. In this paper, in order to monitor this type of fault, the effects of the typical degradations are considered. The parasitic inductance and gate equivalent capacitance of IGBT module change due to bonding wire liftoff, which have different impacts on the external characteristics. So, two aspects of IGBT module terminal characteristics are investigated to identify any measurable signature used for monitoring bond wire liftoff failures: 1) gate-emitter voltage during turn-on process and 2) collector-emitter voltage during turn-off process. This paper aims to provide useful information for further development in monitoring the health of IGBT module.