Thermal Characteristics and Simulation of an Integrated GaN eHEMT Power Module

Compact power modules are emerging which combine both direct bonded copper (DBC) and printed circuit boards (PCB) in integrated structures to achieve fast switching of wide bandgap semiconductors. The literature presenting the new integrated structures only include the DBC in their thermal analysis, and thus the influence of the PCB is often disregarded. In this paper the thermal characteristics of a new integrated GaN eHEMT power module are obtained experimentally. A simulation workflow to extract the thermal characteristics of the integrated module structure using finite element method software is presented and verified. The results predict an error of up to 13% in thermal impedance if the PCB board is not included in the simulation model.