Influence of low junction temperature swing on the power cycling lifetime of bond wire

There is an argument that the lifetime is unlimited at the low junction temperature swing (JTS) since the corresponding stress is believed to only cause elastic deformation. The problem remains that the power cycling test (PCT) will be carried out for several years under low JTS (40K) according to the traditional lifetime modeling method. Therefore, a high-efficiency evaluation method which can greatly shorten the testing time is proposed in this paper to trigger out the same failure mechanism for low JTS, and the TO-247 packaged IGBTs are used as the devices under test (DUTs) to investigate the influence of low JTS on the aging process and power cycling lifetime of bond wire. The results show that the low JTS has a curtailment effect on the lifetime of the crack formation process and has an extension effect on that of the crack propagation.