Thermal investigation of plastic-encapsulated and hermetically sealed components for automotive industry

The reliability and lifetime of electronic components are mainly influenced by aging processes related to superposition effects of mechanical vibrations, thermomechanically induced stress and thermal loads. The latter two factors can be minimized by optimizing the component's thermal design. In simple cases, a satisfying thermal design can be found in an empirical way. However, in order to reduce the experimental effort in this field, thermal simulation methods are applied. In this work, an innovative thermal simulation tool especially designed for the prediction of the thermal performance of complex electronic components is presented. The developed simulation tool is applied for investigating plastic-encapsulated and ceramic packages under various operating conditions. Both steady-state and dynamic analyses are carried out and simulation results are compared with those established in experiments. The experimental test procedure and main features of the developed simulation tool are presented. The reliability expectations from the thermal viewpoint are discussed. Although ceramic thermal conductivity is high compared to plastic moldings, the results clearly show that plastic packages can compete with their ceramic counterparts.