Numerical Analysis of the Thermal Impact of Ceramic Materials in Double-Sided Cooled Power Modules

This article focuses on the thermal analysis of direct bonded copper (DBC) substrates embedded in SiC-based multi-chip power modules. Due to the development of the innovative double-sided cooled technology, such substrates turn out to play a relevant and growing role in defining the PMs thermal, electrical, and mechanical performances. The study is aimed to compare typical ceramic materials adopted for the DBC manufacturing process; the comparison is carried out by means of exceptionally accurate nonlinear FEM 3-D simulations performed in the COMSOL Multiphysics environment. The influence of dissipated power and boundary conditions is thoroughly investigated by accounting for the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivities.